The matrix

LINCOLN ROOM

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
LIBRARY

^

MEMORIAL

the Class of 1901

founded by

HARLAN HOYT HORNER

and

HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER

THE MATRIX

THE MATRIX

BY

MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS

Author of "Blue-grass and Broadway," "The

Golden Bird," "The Melting

OF Molly," etc.

^VV*^^

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1920

Copyright, 1920, by
The Cextubt Co.

Published, February, 1920

FOREWORD

In this period of the History of the United
States of America, when men and women
have again been called upon to sacrifice and
die to preserve and extend the liberty upon
which their great Democracy is founded, it
behooves us to examine and pass judgment
upon all of its foundation stones. The au-
thor claims that the Romance of Thomas
Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the father and
mother of Abraham Lincoln, is one of those
foundation stones. It has been chipped at
and marred and banked over by the dust of
time since those pioneer days in which it was
enacted, of which so little of fact, but so
much of tradition remains. The author has
dug deep into all legends and collected as
much as possible of documentary evidence,
and now presents the reconstructed romance

FOREWORD

as a work of fiction for which she hopes she
has been granted a measure of inspiration.
Her hope of such inspiration is based on the
fact that she was born and reared in the
same httle Bluegrass valley which was the
cradle of the great romance, and many of
the traditions which she has used in her build-
ing are her inheritance. The principal
source of her courage to make such an at-
tempt, and material for the work, came from
the research into the lives of these humble
parents of the great Lincoln, conducted over
a period of many years by her aunt, Hannah
Daviess Pittman, genealogist of distinction,
whose conclusions agree with those of Car-
oline Hanks Hitchcock, set forth in a small
volume on the subject. If this story of the
love of brave Nancy Hanks, who had her-
self been held captive by the Indians, for the
simple rough abolitionist, Thomas Lincoln,
in whom she must have both planted and
fanned the flame of the desire for human
liberty and equality, makes the reader feel

FOREWORD

that the primitive greatness of heart and soul
of these two pioneers was destined to as-
sure the production of Abraham Lincoln,
and gains for them due credit for that great-
ness, the author will rest content.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of
the United States, and author of the Eman-
cipation Proclamation, said of his mother,
Nancy Hanks Lincoln: "All that I am or
ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother,
blessings on her memory."

THE MATRIX

'^EW YORK

THE MATRIX

CHAPTER I

A GREAT love is nourished by the ebb
and flow of the race blood in the gen-
erations before it, and when it becomes an
iridescent matrix it is very apt to produce
the pearl of price. The great twilight stars
watched when her father lifted wee Nancy
Hanks down from a pack-saddle, in which
he had brought her along the Wilderness
Trail from Virginia to Kentucky, into the
strong, awkward, eager arms of young
Thomas Lincoln.

"Careful, Tom; the little maid is asleep,"
cautioned the father. "Since we got her
away from the redskin devils back on the

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trail a month ago, she starts in her rest to
fair break your heart."

Even at her father's low-voiced caution
the long black lashes lifted from the big
purple eyes, which were as dark as the twi-
light shadows coming down through the
branches of the tall oaks that hovered the
Lincoln cabin, and a little shudder began
to thrill through the small body, which sub-
sided at the cradling of the boy's strong
arms.

"Hush-e, hush-e, honey bird," the boy
crooned in a voice of the husky softness of
adolescence, as he hugged her closer with
a strange hunger in his serious, strong face,
with its dark eyes and square jaw, sur-
mounted by a shock of black hair.

Young Nancy took one look at her pro-
tector, snuggled her head close under his
chin, and fairly melted away into the depths
of sleep.

"They ain't no kind of baby Tom won't

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mother, from a nigger to a skunk," said
Mordecai Lincoln, as he watched the boy go
slowly, crooning to his burden, into the
cabin. "Since Pa and Ma died last year,
looks like his grieving has sorter set him on
pitiful things."

"He can't look after my Nancy none too
perticular, since we so near lost her," an-
swered big Joseph Hanks, as he followed
the boy and the child with keen, watchful,
tender eyes. "Here, Mother Nannie, let me
help you 'light. Give mother a hand on the
other side, Mort ; she 's stiff from the long
setting of this month's journey from Vir-
ginia."

"I make you a hearty welcome, Aunt
Nancy, and I hope this house we built fer
you here in Kentucky will suit your no-
tions," said Mordecai, as he carefully helped
his aunt down from the high seat on a weary
mule, back of the pack saddle from which
sleeping Nancy had been lifted.

THE MATRIX

"I '11 ask for nothing more than strong
bars to the doors and windows from the
Indian murderers that killed your Aunt
Sarah Mitchell and stole her little Sarah a
month gone," answered the pioneer woman
in a firm voice that had in it all the sadness
of bereavement but no tears.

"That you '11 have, Aunt Nancy, and mus-
kets always on the trigger f er you and yourn.
But there are 'most too many of us in this
settlement for the red devils to bother us,
any more now. They ain't raided since they
killed Pa and we got five out of six of 'em,"
big Mordecai reassured her.

"I pray God it may be so," answered the
mother of Nancy, as she gave a last look
back into the savage-infested forest through
which she had come, passed the mules of the
caravan which her. husband was beginning
to have unloaded, and went down the path
through the clearing into the home they had
built in the wilderness for her.

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That night there was a gathering of the
Lincoln and Hanks elan in the new Hanks
home, in front of the wide fireplace in which
was now smoldering only a small spring fire
of fragrant cedar chips, though into the
wide, dark cavern there could be piled a half
wagonload of logs against the chill of win-
ter snow.

At one side of the fireplace sat huge Mor-
decai Lincoln with his long gun between his
knees, telling his uncle Joseph Hanks the
particulars of the death of his father, follow-
ing whose lead Joseph, with his three broth-
ers-in-law, Berry, Sparrow, and Mitchell,
had come out from Virginia to pioneer into
the lush bluegrass valleys of the Dark and
Bloody Ground. Richard and Lucy Berry
sat beside him, listening and talking, eager
to hear it all at once, for they were to go on
farther into the wilderness to their cabin
which had been built on a rich land claim
at Beechland by Beach Fork River.

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THE MATRIX

Mother Nancy was moving swiftly about the
room, still settling her household goods
though joining in and directing the conver-
sation; and over in the corner by the flicker-
ing light crouched Tom Lincoln, close to the
rude cot of split cedar rails on whose inter-
laced cords was swung the feather bed, in
which slept wee Nancy. A group of Berry
and Hanks boys sat on the floor beyond him,
listening eagerly to the talk of the men,
while Betsy and Polly Hanks and Nancy
Sparrow crouched opposite, knitting in the
firelight.

"Pa had gone out into the clearing with
Josiah and both of 'em had set their muskets
against a tree about fifty feet from the one
they was felling, which they ought not to
have done. I had turned back to the house,
when the six red devils came outen the woods
and — and done for Pa." Mordecai was re-
lating with the dignified quiet of the pioneer
when under any strain of emotion. "Josiah

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seen them split Pa's head open and he fought
himself loose from 'em and run. He got
away; but after INIa died from grieving, in
a little less than three months, Josh could n't
stand living in the sight of that clearing and
he went West. He 'lowed to kill redskins
as he went and I reckon he did."

"It was the same way with Brother
Mitchell," said Joseph Hanks with a huski-
ness in his throat, and a hard glint in his
eyes as he heard this simple story of the
murder of his brother-in-law by the savages,
who had so nearly stolen from him his own
treasure, sleeping warm and safe across the
hearth from him. "After they had killed
Sister Sarah and tooken Sarah, about as big
as Nancy there, who somehow got back,
Mitchell, he give the two boy children to their
Uncle and Aunt Berry and lit out to follow
and kill. He '11 do it shore."

"How 'd the redskins git at a big party
like you 'alls. Uncle Jo?" asked Mordecai.

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"With you and Uncle Dick Beny and Tom
Sparrow, and the boys they must a-been ten
men."

"We was fools, that 's how," answer Jos-
eph as he took a twist of Virginia tobacco
from his pocket, cut a quid for both ]Mordecai
and Tom Sparrow, also one for Richard
Berry, which was refused, before he put one
into his own square jaw. "We was all
camped down for the night by that clear
spring at the foot hill just after you come
through the big Gap. We 'd killed a young
deer, had venison roast fer suj^per, et heavy
and was all tired out. Mother here had put
Nancy and Sarah to bed next a pillion fur-
therest from the fire on account of wanting
'em to go to sleep away from the talking.
After we was all bedded, here the Injuns
come down on us ! We had n't noticed
nothing."

"Yes, we had noticed one thing," inter-
rupted Richard Berry, as Joseph spat ex-

10

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pertlj^ into the left-hand corner of the chim-
ney farthest from him. "As I came back
from seeing to the ox teams I heard an owl
hoot in a most strange manner, and I told
Jo that it gave me the creeps. Did n't I,
Jo?"

"That was about the hundredth and sixth
owl you had got creeps from since you
started. Brother Berry," answered Joseph as
he crossed fire in tobacco juice with Mor-
decai Lincoln.

"That 's it, sir, the man who knows noth-
ing knows all," declared Brother Berry with
genial acidity as he took out a huge gold
snuff box, and by the use of the contents
procured for himself an equally huge sneeze.
Richard Berry, being both a philosopher and
a man of comparative wealth, was regarded
with respectful esteem by the entire family,
though he was at all times in friendly dis-
cord with his brother-in-law, Joseph Hanks.

"You were telling Mort about the raid,

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Joseph," prompted Mother Nancy with pa-
cific intent as she gave satisfied glances into
the fours corners of the large cabin at all
the pillowed young Hanks heads beside
which were laid INIitchell orphans and a few
Sparrows in the split-rail beds.

"Was I a-telling it or Brother Berry? "
was Joseph's belligerent answer.

"Go on with the narrative, Brother
Hanks," urged Mr. Berry courteously,
though gaining the victory with the one
erudite word which Joseph Hanks scorned
to notice.

"As I was a-saying when cut off, we
had n't noticed nothing and in the dead of
night thej'^ lit on us with a yell. I kicked
the chunks of fire together, and I seen a big
Indian right by Sister Sarah ^litchell and — "
the hardy pioneer's words faltered and Lucy
Berry's soft voice took up the story with a
little sob:

"She didn't suffer none, Mort, and she

1«

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died before she knew about — about Sarah
being stole away."

"We killed two and lit out after 'em as
far as we dared go from the wimmen and
children in the dark," continued Joseph with
hard lines across his mouth. "It was a
whole hour before we found they had taken
the two little girls. God, ]Mort, when I
found my baby Nancy gone I — "

But here an interruption occurred in the
tragic story; small Nancy suddenly sat up
in her rude bed and began to sob, looking
wildly about in the half light. Quickly her
mother started to her, her father half rose
from his seat, and Richard Berry was about
to ponderously cross the hearth in her direc-
tion when she was gathered into Tom Lin-
coln's strong arms before any of them could
reach her.

"Hush-e, hush-e, honey bird," he crooned
with his cheek on hers; and again his charm
worked. To the astonishment of the rest of

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the sympathetic party the long lashes almost
instantly fell over the wild purple eyes and
the frightened mite nestled back into the
arms she had already learned to trust.

"That 's the first time she ain't had a bad
crying spell when she waked up since that
morning she crawled back into camp. We
have n't ever been able to ask her about how
she got aloose 'cause she begins to tremble
and cr}^ for Sarah, that she loved as a sister,
if she was onlj^ a cousin. We just have to
tole her along not to think about it any
more," said her father in an undertone, as
they all sat quietly and watched the big awk-
ward boy rock and croon over the five-year-
old.

"Tom sure has got her pacified. Let 's
let him take her home with him, father," said
William Hanks, a big strapping young
pioneer of twenty years, with a brotherly
twinkle in his eyes, as he looked at the small
sleeping girl in Tom Lincoln's arms.

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"Rather have her than a skunk kitten,
Tom?" questioned Ned Berry, a swaggering
sixteen-year-old boy with bright blue eyes,
a thatch of gold hair and almost as tall as
his father.

A quick, rare smile spread across young
Thomas' bashful face as he went on with his
crooning and rocking.

"She won't be skeered any more after I
git her tamed," he whispered.

"Taming a woman is a job that begins
again as soon as it ends, Thomas," observed
Mr. Berr}^ over his snuff box as the men be-
gan to collect their rifles quietly, preparatory
to betaking themselves to the hay mow in
the field, as the cabins would be needed for
the feminine and juvenile members of the
family party, until the Berrys and the Spar-
rows should move on to their cabins at
Beechland. The taming of Nancy Hanks
was never accomplished by Thomas Lincoln
or the world at large.

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Perhaps, when offered the choice, it would
have been wiser for Tom to have chosen the
guardianship and education of the skunk kit-
ten, rather than the position of protector to
small Nancy, for she proved a veritable will-
o'-the-wisp to him, and before she was done
with him, beckoned him into far places.

"Go to Tom, Nancy," became, as the days,
weeks and months passed, a veritable slogan
in the Hanks cabin, teeming with and run-
ning over as it was with pioneer life and
activity.

"I don't see how I could make out if Tom
did n't keep Nancy safe and pacified so much
of the time," sighed Mother Hanks as she,
her daughters, Betsy and Polly, and one
of the frying-size boys began on the weekly
task of dipping candles in deer and bear tal-
low they had rendered in the huge iron ket-
tle in the open.

"I 'm mighty glad she don't tag me like
she does Tom," young Jo Hanks congrat-

16

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ulated himself as he shoved a fat pine chunk
farther under the big steaming kettle.

"Nancy gits her way and goes it," ob-
served Polly Hanks as she dipped a row of
six strong cotton cords, fastened in a line on
a cedar slab into the kettle of melted tallow,
and waved them in the air to let the grease
harden, by repeating which process she was
as sure to evolve six straight and sightly
candles as was the old red sun to set just as
the time for lighting them would arrive.
"She et five fried apple pies for her dinner
and looks like her stomick could n't er held
more than two under her apron. I did n't
want to give 'em to her but was afraid not
to."

"She tooken three of 'em to Tom, I seen
her give 'em to him. His sister Susie don't
give him but two for his dinner. She ain't
his mother," observed young Hanks as he
again fed the chunks to the fire under the
candle factory.

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"Nobody but mothers understand rightly
that boys are hollow from hoofs to horns,"
observed Mother Hanks as she gave her row
of candles the tenth dip and wave, which
brought them to about the size of a slate pen-
cil. "I must look more careful after Tom's
fodder. I don't think Mordecai's wife is
child wise and his good mother has gone on
before."

"Keep her soul, Lord Jesus," said tall
Betsy Hanks devoutly.

"Amen!" answered INIother Hanks as she
went on with her dipping.

Pioneer women had need to lean heavily
on the "everlasting arms."

And for more things than the tending of
small Xancy could Thomas Lincoln be de-
pended upon.

From his earliest years Tom had been a
passionate woodsman, and he knew his Ken-
tucky forests as well as any redskin on the
Dark and Bloody Ground, and loved them

18

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as well. He watched all the trees and
bushes through their spring budding, their
summer leafing, past their gaudy autumn
parade to their winter starkness, and knew
accurately what their processes would yield
in food, fuel and clothing for man and beast.
The entire Lincoln household counted on the
great piles of hickory and walnuts that Tom
gathered, hulled, smmed and stored, while the
autumn sun shone, against the long nights
by the big winter fires. Day after day he
brought in great branches of elderberry for
wine, and long vines of wild grape for j elly,
the sugar for which he obtained in the spring
from tapping the tall maple trees ; and only
Tom knew how to select the ears of Indian
corn that would pop into white kernels on
the hot stones before the fire.

"Bird, beast and root, Tom could make his
living if you turned him loose in the woods,"
his brother Mordecai remarked boastfully
to his uncle Jo Hanks, though the guard-

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ianship of young Thomas, which had fallen
upon his shoulders at the death of his par-
ents, sat lightly upon him.

"Why don't you teach him to read?" his
uncle Joseph asked, as he steadied a tall
cedar post that huge Mordecai was raising
upon which to nail the timbers for a new
shack.

"Got no time to fool with him. He 's all
right; as long as a boy has rabbit and bear
and turkey track to set his traps by, he don't
need to read and write books." This educa-
tional value was decided by the own uncle
of the man who less than a centun^ later de-
livered an address at Gettysburg which is
the foundation stone upon which rests Amer-
ican literature.

"Shoo, Xancy knows her a-b's right now,
and says 'em to me every night. She is
going to graduate to c-a-t tonight if I get
home in time," bragged Joseph, the father
of Xancy, as he tramped the dirt tight

20

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around the pole, while Mordecai went on to
another.

"Well, Nancy can read Tom's 'cats' to
him and let him keep to the tm*key tracks,"
Mordecai answered, as he bent his broad
back to the raising of a pole that it would
take four of his descendants to hft from the
ground.

Thus arbitrarily was dismissed the educa-
tion of Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abra-
ham.

Pioneer life is hard at its best, and is there
not some excuse for not setting a getter of
rations at spelling book and pot hooks, when
the family pot is always in danger of show-
ing an empty bottom? It is just not to re-
sent the fact that Thomas Lincoln was
forced to spend a great part of his life in
the woods tracking and trapping, until the
advent into his life of Nancy Hanks, who
had herself been tracked and trapped.

il

CHAPTER II

A jSTD the arrival of Nancy Hanks into
'^■^ the trapping profession of Tom Lin-
cohi on a July morning was with the cy-
clonic violence of cloud and tear burst fol-
lowed by sunshine. It happened in this way.
A half mile down on Lincoln Creek, Tom
had set his traps to catch young frying size
turkeys, which begin to run free about the
last of June. He had been urged to an
early trapping because Jo and Bill Hanks
had been out for deer two days before and
had come in with six of the young bronze
poults hanging from their belts. That night
Mother Hanks had had a great wild turkey
fry and Nancy had run down the dirt road
to the Lincoln house to summon Tom, as was

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her habit when ever the huge fire in the little
lean-to log kitchen of her own abode gave
forth what seemed to her a particularly at-
tractive odor.

"Better feed him some of that c-a-t outen
your spelling book, Nancy, instead of fried
turkey," teased huge Mordecai, as he
pushed his rush-bottomed chair back from
his own scoured table, which had been split
with an axe out of a cedar tree that had
grown a century for that utilitarian pur-
pose.

"Not me, never," retorted Tom, as he
wiped his mouth on his hickory shirt sleeve.
"Reading is for girls."

"Or maybe he'd eat a little d-o-g for you,
Nancy," jeered Mordecai's wife, Susie, as
she polished the grease off a bunch of small
Lincoln countenances with the end of a
homespun towel, wet from a gourd dipped in
the cedar piggin of water by the door.

"Hush up your mouth, Cousin Susie,"

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flamed back Nancy with rage, fairly snap-
ping from the black fringed violet eyes at
what her six years was able to recognize as
an insult to her beloved protector.

"Don't talk mean to Tom. My mother
says always save the liver wing 'for him
'cause his mother is dead.' "

"Jest listen to the sass-box," further
jeered the rough young pioneer woman, as
she began to bed her two-headed brood.

"Shoo, Susie, let the little maid be," cau-
tioned Mordecai, "don't you know that she 's
Uncle Jo and Aunt Nancy's pie-child since
the redskins almost got her? Here, Nancy,
take a slab of Cousin Susie's sweet cake with
hickory nuts in it." As he spoke he held
out a slice of the delicacy to the important
and offended young relative.

For a moment Nancy eyed the offered
appeasement haughtily, then the sunshine
broke over her face, curled the young lips
into a moist rose bud flanked with rippling

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THE MATRIX

dimples, and she held out her brown, briar-
scratched little hand with a gurgle of joy.

"Thank you, Cousin Susie," she said with
a funny little bob and back step of one dusty
stunip-toed foot, which was a pioneer ver-
sion of a curtsey brought with other gentle
traditions by Mother Hanks from Virginia.

Mordecai laughed heartily at the tactful
assault on his rough and tumble wife, who se-
cretly adored the dainty young lady cousin,
and was determinedly modelling the tow
heads upon her pattern.

"Ain't she the beauty though," observed
big Mordecai, as he watched Nancy go down
the road hand in hand with burly, awkward
Tom in his hickory shirt and butternut jeans
trousers, with rawhide suspenders holding
them together. "She split that slab of cake
with Tom in justice and they is both a-
munching away fer dear life."

"She sure have got a way with you men
folks and boys. You notice her against her

25

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own good," rough Susan began to complain.

"Here, let me tote a couple of buckets of
water from the spring fer you," Mordecai
offered as a price for escape from a scold-
ing, the like of which he had enco antered be-
fore. Susan's vicious jealousy was a fire
that smouldered to blaze at the slightest
provocation and the atmosphere of her
household was often sultry from the con-
flagration.

"You 're soft about both Tom and Nancy
and you 'd better keep it for your own chil-
dren and me," she grumbled after his re-
treating figure.

"Well, you make it hard enough for Tom
with Ma gone," Mordecai ventured back
from a safe distance, then went whistling on
his way.

Susan's blaze flared on the kitchen thresh-
old.

"Git your supper outen the skillet and git
out of my sight," she commanded a little

£6

THE MATRIX

double jointed, round headed negro boy by-
name Runt, whose mother, in a high red
cotton turban, was shifting the pots and skil-
lets in the big fireplace. The Lincoln
mother had brought JNIammy Jude and her
family from Virginia with her, and while the
black woman and her husband and children
had gone with the land to big JMordecai,
after the English first-son custom, to which
Virginians held for many generations, to
Tom had been given the little Runt.

On her death bed, to which she had taken
after seeing her husband brought home from
the murdering Indians, gentle JNIary Lin-
coln had said to JMordecai :

"Give Tom Jude's Runt. He 's pitiful
in nature and will look after the poor
thing."

"All right, JNIa," ]Mordecai had answered,
and Mordecai Lincoln's word was as good
as any man's word or bond. The Runt was
Tom's property.

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But being "Tom's nigger" often brought
the hand of Susan down heavily upon the
fate of Runt. He knew when to vanish
into thin air.

The turkey fry at ^Mother Hanks' could
have been fairly called a successful repast,
and Nancy gathered a pile of drum bones, a
few W'ings and a back to give on a clean
cedar chip to the Runt, who at all times
squatted beside the door of any interior
which contained his master, Tom.

"Runt," said Tom, as he came to the door.
"We '11 set snares tonight. These Hankses
beat us onct, but we '11 ketch up with 'em and
get a dozen poidts fer Aunt Nancy tomor-
row."

"We shure will," answered the Runt w^ith
a grin nearly a foot wide as Nancy reap-
peared in the back door beside Tom with a
slice of bread and brown sugar for him.

"Nice little Runt," she said, as she
watched the dainty feed the grin.

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The Runt's smile was sugared adoration.

It was on the following day that Tom and
the Runt got into trouble with young Nancy.

It happened on the edge of the forest
where they had set their snares in the dead
of night and it perhaps was the spark that
started the conflagration of 1861.

"Glory, ]\Iars Tom, they is three in this
pen and hit is the furst one. We '11 shore
git our dozen fer Miss Nancy ter day,"
chuckled the Runt as he knelt by the square
prison, made of latticed cedar sticks which
had fallen upon the three beautiful bronze
wild things when they hopped on the spring,
while feeding on the corn he had spread
cunningly thereunder. Runt was as captive
as they, only did n't realize it and failed to
beat against the custom that caged him as
they beat their bronze wings and breasts
against the cedar sticks.

"We '11 just tie their feet together and go
get the others further down stream and kill

29

THE MATRIX

'em all at onct," directed Tom as he bent to
examine his catch. "They shore are fat and
Aunt Xancy will — "

And then the volcano whii-led into the sit-
uation.

Small Xancy splashed across the creek
upon her usual adventure of tagging Tom,
and stood beside the two boys kneeling upon
the ground, tying the feet of the j^oung tm*-
keys.

"I saw you a-going, Tom Lincoln, with-
out me and then I had to come to find you
and — what is that, Tom?"

The child had j^ut her arm around Tom's
neck and bent to see what it was in which he
and Runt were so absorbed with excited in-
terest, and then suddenly she stood erect
with horror freezing her laughing face.

"'\"\niat is it, Tom?" she asked again, with
a flutter in her throat.

"It 's a snare we 've trapped some poults
in fer supper, honey bird," Tom answered.

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"We are going to tie their legs and take 'em
home to kill."

"No, Tom, no ! Let 'em go quick, quick !"
Nancy suddenly wailed as she stood shud-
dering with her face in her hands. "I can't
stand it, Tom, let 'em go."

"But you et poults that Bill and Jo shot
for supper last night, Nancy," remon-
strated Tom, while Runt sat back on his
bare feet and rolled his big eyes with help-
less astonishment as this battle, which was
to be for his ultimate freedom, began.
"I 'm the champeen trapper and hunter
hereabouts and you don't want 'em to shame
me, do you?"

"Them poults was killed when they did n't
know it, Tom. They was n't tied. Let 'em
go, let 'em go. I can't stand it. Nobody
oughter tie nothing alive."

"But, Nancy, honey, we are going to — "

At this Nancy took her hands down from
her white little face in which her violet eyes

31

THE MATRIX

blazed with a great fire, while her small body
shook from her bare stum^^ed toes to the
crown of her red-brown hair, and the wound
in her own bosom was laid bare and began
to flow for the saving of the small forest cap-
tives of the present, and perhaps for the
liberation of a multitude in the distant fu-
ture. Fear had been dammed up in her
childish heart and had eaten into her vitals.
Now the gates of her emotions were opened.
"Let 'em go, Tom, let 'em go," she wailed.
"That Indian what carried me away in the
night over his shoulder, he put his hand on
my throat and squeezed it so I could n't call
Daddy. He walked and he walked and he
walked in the dark right towards a big star,
and then he stopped and — and — and he tied
Sarah and me with ropes to a tree while
they all drinked outen bottles and went to
sleep. Sarah cried and cried but I — I jest
gnawed and gnawed at that rope until I got
loose. I put my back to the star and runned

32 -

THE MATRIX

and runned, while the Indian was asleep,
and got back to my Daddy and Mother, but,
oh Tom, Sarah is still tied and crying.
Nothing in this world ought to be tied. Let
'em go free, Tom, let 'em go free."

The dark eyes in the somber boy's face
caught fire from the flame in those of the
small woman above him, and with a twist he
snapped the bit of hemp cord and threw the
poults high into the air.

"Lordy!" yelled the black, not taking in
the situation, though it touched him most
nearly.

"Go turn 'em all out of the snares, Runt,"
Tom said quietly. "We '11 take the guns
and go see how many we can shoot on the
wing."

"And never shut up and tie no more,
Tom?" Nancy questioned, with a radiance
breaking all over her storm-tossed little face.
"Oh, Tom!" With which she clung to him
fiercely and pressed her face against his

33

THE MATRIX

hickory shirt just about at the height of the
tender heart in his left breast.

"Because j^ou was tied I '11 never tie
nothin' again, Nancy," Tom answered, and
with which vow he took upon himself a fate
that followed him even until his three-score
and tenth year. "Now go on home, while I
stand here and watch you. You know you
ain't 'low^ed this far in the clearing without
nobody watching you. We got to do some
hunting today or git beat by the Hankses."

"I '11 go back, but don't you never again
go nowhere without asking me if you kin.
I 'm going to always follow you," was the
autocratic answer, as young Nancy pre-
pared to take her departure, thoroughly her-
self again.

"Well, git," answered Tom with an in-
dulgent twinkle in his grave eyes, that came
only at his small charge's most outrageous
demands. "When you git big enough to
wear a apron, you kin tie me to its strings."

34.

THE MATRIX

"Hush your mouth," flung back Nancy,
making spray fly as she splashed across the
creek.

"Aunt Nancy said you had to learn two
Bible verses if you said that sass to anybody
again," Tom called across to the bank on
which Nancy stood, poised for a barefoot
flight down the road towards the Hanks
cabins in the distance.

"Well, you ain't anybody," was the an-
swer flung at him over a flying shoulder.

"Huh-who-huh," guffawed Runt from a
little distance in the clearing.

"You come on with that gun if you 'low
for us to git more than any dozen poults this
day," commanded Tom. With which he
and his bondman disappeared into the wil-
derness.

The day's bag was fourteen poults shot
on the wing and the Lincoln records were
again safe.

"What made you shoot all day instead of

35

THE MATRIX

snarino' what vou could have done in an
hour or two, Tom?" questioned big Morde-
cai, who had come over to his aunt's for
supper at the news of this second turkey fry,
bringing Susan and one of her nut cakes
with him.

Joseph Hanks, young Jo, Billy, Mor-
decai, and the other boys were taking their
ease in the twilight with their rush-bottomed
chairs tilted back against the front of the
cabin. Mother Hanks sat in her rocker and
Susan Lincoln and Polly sat on a bench un-
der the huge oak roof trees knitting, while
Betsy within was putting the household in
order for bedding. There was also a guest
of honor for the occasion, as Richard Berry
had ridden over from Beechland, bringing
saddlebags of gifts from sister to sister and
a head full of news and contentions, the lat-
ter especially for his beloved brother-in-law,
Joseph Hanks. He sat in a large arm-chair
and Nancy, his beloved, sat upon his knee,

36

THE MATRIX

while Tom Lincoln lounged on the ground
near by, with Runt crouched in the shadow
back of hini.

"Yes, what did you shoot fer, Tom, with
powder as skeerce as you know it is?" Susan
quarreled at the boy, thus scarring Tom's
moment of triumph with her sordid ill tem-
per and dislike.

"Shoo, Susie, don't jaw the lad when he 's
made a record of six above any man's in the
settlement," admonished Richard Berry, he
being the only person present who dared to
take issue with Susan's bad temper. "Your
nigger did n't shoot none for you, did he,
Tom?" he joked.

"I 'd jest like to see anybody in this set-
tlement dignify a nigger with a gun," Susan
snapped, in spite of the curb put upon her by
the revered brother-in-law. Berry.

"No, sir, Runt can't shoot," answered
Tom.

"You '11 both git back to your trapping

37

THE MATRIX

after this show off with valuable gun pow-
der," growled Susan.

"Tom ain't never going to trap nothing
alive any more. He promised me," an-
nounced small Nancy from her perch upon
the august Berry knee.

"Well, I reckon the Lincoln family will
starve next winter fer rabbit stew if you say
so, Nancy," jeered Susan.

"Hush your mouth, Cousin Susie — yes,
Mother, I '11 learn three verses of the Bible
for the sass — and don't say Tom will any
more tie up and trap things. No big In-
dian ever squeezed your throat and tied you
with a rope you had to gnaw to git back to
your Daddy and your uncle Berry. Oh,
say, Tom won't have to tie 'em any more,
Uncle Berry," with which the small cham-
pion of liberty began to tremble and cling
to the head of the family with his gold snuff
box.

"Praise God she has spoken out and

S8

THE MATRIX

maybe we can hear something about httle
Sarah," ejaculated Mother Hanks.

"Sarah cried and cried while I gnawed
the rope. She would n't gnaw," Nancy
sat up and said with a flame in her eyes.
"A man Indian wanted to slap her but a
woman Indian would n't let him."

"I reckon mother hearts are about the
same size, white or red," ejaculated Mother
Hanks, clasping her hands with their knit-
ting needles to her bosom. "I pray protec-
tion for the child if ahve from the dear
Lord."

"Amen, Sister Nancy," answered Mr.
Berry devoutly.

"Because I was tied, me and Tom ain't
never going to tie things," intrepid Nancy
continued shrewdly, determined to have the
matter out in family council, while she would
have the weight of Uncle Berry's opinion on
her side as she was sure from former expe-
riences it would be cast.

39

THE MATRIX

"The question of human freedom is agita-
ting the United States just about as much
as the question of animal liberty is rippling
the surface of our family circle," Mr. Berry
declaimed over his gold snuff box, thus
suavely covering the minor particular ques-
tion with the larger, general one. "I see
the Massachusetts State is for selling the
blacks into the Southern colonies and free-
ing their consciences while filling their pock-
etbooks. The blacks die in Massachusetts."

"We '11 take 'em all," said Joseph Hanks,
surveying his clearing which was beginning
to stretch deep into the primeval forest. "I
am thinking to buy two good bucks before
snow flies."

"A trader came into Beechland last month
and I bought a likely black boy six feet two
for six hundred dollars. He ran away and
caught up with the trader before morning,"
Mr. Berry related, after a pinch of snuff and
its results.

40

THE MATRIX

"What did you do?"

"Brought him back and confined him a
few days!" The big word got past small
Nancy on his knee trying to listen but nod-
ding drowsily.

"Did it work?"

"Yes, after Lucy had made me ride a day
and a night to buy his wife and two yearling
pickaninnies from the trader at four hun-
dred and fifty. Got 'em both working out
a cotton patch and the louder they sing the
faster they work. They are as fat and
happy as chipmunks. Here, Tom, take
your baby into the house, she 's fast asleep."

"Yes, take her, Tom, she won't know it if
you move her, and I don't want her to wake
and cry for Sarah," said Mother Hanks as
her needles began to fly again.

Tom reached up and took small Nancy
into his arms, but instead of carrying her
in to bed, he cradled her on his knees and
listened to the i*est of the conversation as it

41

THE MATRIX

meandered over the question of the right or
wrong of human liberty.

"Well, I 'low I '11 be able to keep two
bucks if I git 'em," drawled Joseph Hanks.

"Well, I must say I sorter sympathize in
my conscience with Massachusetts about
freedom, but my tobacco and cotton have
got to be worked," said Mr. Berry. "I
can't feel like the Lord intended us to buy
and sell human beings."

"That ain't the wav to look at it, Brother
Berry," Joseph Hanks answered as he
rolled a quid of tobacco in his mouth. "He
brought 'em outen savage lands fer us to
make human beings of and we 've got to
have the say over 'em same as our children,
'cause they have got no more sense than chil-
dren."

"Then if it 's right for Uncle Berry to tie
up and buy and sell his nigger, it is right for
you to tie up and buy and sell me, which it
ain't. Everybody oughter be free of every-

42

THE MATRIX

body." Tom Lincoln's quiet voice, in
which the deep tones of a man made a bass
for the soprano notes that still lingered from
his boyhood, cut into the conversation. As
he spoke, Nancy stirred in his arms and he
rose and took her into the house away from
the argument.

"That boy has got more curious notions
than a dominicker hen has got stripes, and
he 's jest as techy as she is when setting,"
observed young Jo Hanks. "Not trajDping
'cause Nancy don't want him to, huh?"

"Well, if Nancy don't want him to he
ain't a-going to if it reminds her of In-
dians," decided big INIordecai with shrewd
indulgence, for he was mindful of the fact
that he was to enter a triangle mule deal
with his uncles Hanks and Berry in the
morning and he wanted them unruffled by
trouble with the mutual apple of their eyes.
"Runt can do the trapping and keep it outer
Nancy's sight. Tom 's big enough for

43

THE MATRIX

learning carpentering with Joe here, any-
way."

"Yes, I'd hke to learn him on that new
barn we all are going to raise next week,"
said young Jo with a shrewd twinkle in his
eyes, very like his father's. "Tom is as big
and strong as any man now, if only sixteen.
Wanter work with me, Tom?" While he
was speaking Tom had deposited Nancy in
her sister Betsy's care and returned to the
family conclave.

"Yes," answered Tom quietly, thus re-
nouncing for himself the freedom of a
woodsman to tie himself to a carpenter's
bench because of his promise to the cause of
freedom he had given Nancy Hanks in the
sixth year of her existence, a. d. 1790.

44

CHAPTER III

TIME raced along with the years for
small Nancy Hanks on the fleet wings
of the wild geese driving north in the sum-
mer and south in the winter. The blush of
pink-budded springs deepened to the flush
of golden and empurpled autumns. Sum-
mers came and passed with seed time and
harvests. The fields were now once and
again in bloom with delicate daisy-like wild
flowers which follow the wake of the cradlers
of grain. The zig-zag worm-like fences of
rails, dividing the fields, fenced in their cor-
ners riots of crimson vines, and tall regi-
ments of golden rod that defied the autumns
and the harvests until the snow flurries of
winter seared them and laid them low.
The small Nancy waxed strong and grew ;

45

THE MATRIX

how she grew ! The Httle settlement on Lin-
coln Creek, which had grown with her
growth into a hamlet of a score or more
houses with a log tavern for passers on the
Wilderness Trail, and a clapboarded roofed
church, marveled with pride in her prowess
and spoiled her as if she were some young
princess of the royal blood.

"Yes, ]Miss Nancy is training me to train
vines in my sixtieth year with no regard to
my rheumatics at all," grumbled tall, lean
Mr. George Haskins, the tavern keeper, to
Elder Jesse Head, the Methodist Circuit
Rider, who sat on the front porch ne'ar
the door. JNIr. Haskins stood on an up-
turned barrel and wound the tough shoots of
a scarlet trumpet vine over the doorway of
the log tavern, while nine-year-old Nancy
stood beneath him with strings, a hammer
and some sharp wooden pegs to use as nails.

'T think having vines all over houses is
like wearing Sunday clothes that don't cost

46

THE MATRIX

nothing," remarked young Nancy with
dancing eyes, as she reached up a peg and
the hammer to her victim, who was steady-
ing himself against the cedar post on which
the sign "Log-Tavern" hung. "I 'm going
to bring you some camphor and bear grease
ointment to rub your back with, Mr. Has-
kins. ]Mother let me make it myself,"
Nancy tendered in a spirit of fair trade.

"Is the grease outen that bear Tom Lin-
coln shot last fall, when it was making off
with Brother Haskins' heifer calf?" asked
the Circuit Rider with interest, for Tom's
exploit with the big brown marauder at
twenty paces, a last load in his old flint-lock
and with a damp powder-horn, had been the
epic of the rush-bottom-chair hunters' con-
claves for the entire past winter.

"Naw, Nancy hev rubbed all the grease
outen that bear on Tom's hair this winter fer
singin' school, and then it has looked like
a wore-out twig broom at that," Mr.

47

THE MATRIX

Haskins answered as he pounded in the peg
for the confining of the trumpeter.

"Last Sunday night at meeting Tom's
head was shck enough for a fly to shp up to
his death on. I testify to that myself," the
Circuit Rider hastened to say as he saw a
retort forming itself within Nancy which
might upset the trainer of the vines, for the
purple eyes were emitting flashes from back
of their black defenses that Elder Head and
Brother Haskins both knew to forerun a
storm. "Tom has got a great power in his
voice when he sings Rock of Ages with you
helping him, Nancy."

"Tom kinder got tangled in his tune when
he tried to sing outen the same book with
Sallie Bush at night services, her in that
dimity her father had brung all the way from
Philadelphia on mule pack," Mr. Haskins
observed as he drove the last peg and tied
the last string. "What about Tom and Sal-
lie, Nancy?"

48

THE MATRIX

"Oh, I think SalHe is jest beautiful in that
dress and I '11 let her sing with Tom all she
wants to," answered Nancy with feminine
rapture over the beautiful Sallie and her
apparel, thus evincing a generosity which
was most unfeminine. The heart of nine
years is usually as generous and sexless as
that of a white-feathered cherub.

It is to the credit of the tenderness in the
rough pioneer's heart that he winked at the
butternut-breeched divine under his roof
tree, and desisted in any attempt to make a
jealous rift in the lute of the small cherub
to whom he handed the hammer and nails.

"Well, if you keep Tom greased up well,
I reckon Sallie will be proper grateful to
you, Nancy; bear-gTcased hair is a good
courting aid," he observed with another
wink. "Any more jobs you want to put on
my poor back?"

"No, thank you, sir," answered Nancy
with a sudden resolve beginning to burn in

49

THE MATRIX

her purple eyes. "What else is good aids
on courting a beautiful young lady, Mr.
Haskins?"

"Waal, now. how about clean hands and
neck and ears and shirt. Brother Head?"
iSIr. Haskins consulted the elder with great
gravity,

"Well said, Brother Haskins, well said,"
assented Elder Head with a well-concealed
smile tugging at his hps, under his white
beard.

"Say, Mr. Haskins, I 've got to get home
quick, as it 's 'most sundown, but I 'm going
to send Runt back with that camphor and
bear grease for yom* back. I '11 send a piece
of mother's old flannel petticoat to rub it
on hot, and Runt will help you as you ain't
married," Nancy said as she took her de-
parture with an intention for action written
all over her small person.

"I suspect that poor Tom Lincoln is in
for a bodily regeneration," remarked Elder

50

THE MATRIX

Head as Brother Haskins took a rush-bot-
tomed chair beside his guest and tilted him-
self against the log wall for the recuperation
of his powers after his decorative efforts.

"That Nancy Hanks is one of these here
pretty pink garden roses with a two-horse
power buzz-saw for a center," remarked Mr.
Haskins, as he rubbed his back with one
hand and looked after the little blue home-
spun figure disappearing down the road to-
wards the Hanks home, which had grown
from the one -room log cabin into which
Mother Hanks had arrived from the Wilder-
ness, to a pretentious mass of log rooms all
covered by one low clapboard roof under
whose eaves doves were nesting in the trum-
pet vines and wood-creeper. "She have got
this whole town roped and thrown where she
can set on it, Nancy has."

"Nancy uses her heart-strings for ropes,
Brother Haskins ; that 's why they hold.
Heart strings bind a friend like an iron

51

UBRAinr

THE MATRIX

band," the elder mused as his eyes also fol-
lowed the retreating blue figure, which was
disappearing in a cloud of dust raised by the
fleet bare feet that bore Xancy rapidly on
her mission.

"True," answered Brother Haskins, and
reached for his tobacco twist.

The sun was just sinking behind the tree-
tops as Xancy darted past the house and
over to the Hanks carpenter shop, which
stood in a clmnp of tall oaks beside the creek
across the clearing. On her way she passed
her brother, broad Jo Hanks, going in from
his w^ork with his leather apron still strapped
to his waist. He made a grab for the flee-
ing small girl, caught her, swung her above
his head, kissed her, spanked her and re-
leased her.

"Oh, Jo, can I get Tom now?" she de-
manded rather than requested.

"Tom 's finishin' off a piggin for ]Mrs.
Hendricks and vou 'd better let him be, for

52

THE MATRIX

the old ladj^ gets het up if she 's crossed."
"I '11 take it home to her if it 's finished
late, and she won't say nothing but give me
a tea cake outen the box if I catch her round
the waist from behind 'fore she knows I 'm
there and skeer her." Xancy planned with
the assurance of long experience with her
peppery neighbor.

"Say, Xancy, don't you ever try to sneak
up on the devil that way, on account of his
forked tail," laughed big Jo, carefully edg-
ing one of his huge bare feet over one of
Xancy's small toes which was adorned with
a dusty pink rag, and for his pains failed
to receive the alarmed wiggle for which he
was working. Nancy Hanks was filled with
a certainty that her small world intended
her no hurt, and could not be frightened
with any threat.

"What do you want with Tom now?"
he asked, as he ruffled her bronze

hair.

as

*"" Central p,„x v/«r

THE MATRIX

"I want to fix him up pretty before sing-
ing school tonight. It won't be more than
two hours, and please let me have him now,
Jo," pleaded Nancy.

"If you expect to make Tom pretty in any
two hours, sissy, get to doin' it," laughed
Jo, as he went on his way and Xancy flew
on hers.

The last rays of the departing sun were
falling across Tom Lincoln as Xancy en-
tered the shop, and he lifted his head from
the drawing knife with which he was mak-
ing pink cedar shavings curl off the rounded
sides of the piggin, to smile at her with a
gravity that made the smile seem a very
personal gift. In the years that had passed
since wee Xancy had been lowered into his
arms and life, Tom had grown from a loose-
jointed awkward boy into a very tall, strong
youth, still awkward but powerful as any
man. His hands and feet were enormous
and his chest was arched like a bellows. His

54

THE MATRIX

head was broad-browed and fine, and was
poised with an uncouth grace on a long
neck from which his sweaty brown hickory
shirt fell back half way down his hairy
breast. His leathern apron was girded
about his slender, lithe waist and his serious
face was smudged with dirt and sweat.
His thick black hair rose in a shock that de-
fied the ministrations lavished on it by Nancy
since the time of the sacrifice of the brown
bear. His eyes lost their smile and re-
garded Nancy seriously as he began to run
his huge skilled hand over the surface he
was polishing.

"What you want, honey bird? I 'm
busy," he said.

"Joe says you can stop work and come
right with me, Tom," Nancy both cajoled
and commanded.

"Jo Hanks ain't makin' this piggin, and
I gave my own promise. to Mrs. Hendricks.
A promise is a promise. What do you want

55

THE MATRIX

of me anvwav? Can't you let me be,
Xancy?" Tom began with defiance and
ended with a faltering plea to continue his
business in hand.

"This is singing school night and I want
to — that is you oughter fix up, Tom."
Xancy had begun her answer with direct
enthusiasm for her task, but had paused
midway to inject what she considered the
necessary amount of cajoling.

"Oh, shoo, I can do that in ten minutes
after I eat my supper," Tom answered, as
he began once more to make the pink curls
fall to the floor.

"Xo, you can't, Tom," Xancy declared.
"You are just awful and — and I 'm going
to fix you up myself. I just love that Miss
Sallie Bush, and I want j'ou clean and nice
to sing with her. Please, Tom."

Did not the love in Xancy's child heart
for Sallie Bush but justly bear interest in
the older girl's faithful cherishing of the

56

THE MATRIX

National Treasure she was to leave in her
hands years later ?

"I 'm no baby. I guess I can wash and
comb myself," Tom growled while his big
ears grew firey red at the bare mention of
the enchanting Sallie.

Now Nancy Hanks had two tried and
proven ways to manage Thomas Lincoln,
and in her heart of hearts she preferred the
exciting, commanding one by which she
fairly stormed him into doing her will: but
time and daylight were scarce on this oc-
casion, and she used the other method, which
she knew to be more swift and sure.

"I just ask you please, please, Tom, and
you don't want me to cry, do you?" The
little tremor that Nancy, aged nine and six
months, threw into her voice, was worthy
of twenty years' practice. "Gus Hardin
greases his boots until they shine for sing-
ing school and Jo puts on a white shirt, and
Dave Hall's mother has made him a red silk

57

THE MATRIX

sash to put around his neck, that he calls a
tie. I don't want to be ashamed of you,
Tom."

"Oh, blame it, Nancy, what do you want
me to do?" Tom growled as he threw down
his knife and surrendered.

"Go straight home, Tom, and I '11 come
down to your pump with the things to fix
you," Nancy commanded, with joy at her
quick triumph dancing up into her eyes.
"Oh, you '11 be sure enough beautiful," and
with which promise, indicating the strength
of her imagination, Nancy departed as Tom
began to take off his apron, preparatory to
closing up shop.

The scene that followed at the pump in the
backyard of the Lincoln home is indicative
of how life was to use Thomas Lincoln, pre-
paring a ceremony of honors for him which
he was not to reap.

Who shall say what burned high in his
strong young heart as he walked down the

58

THE MATRIX

dusty road, to be adorned for the meeting
with the beautiful one in the mule-trans-
ported dimity, who had made his voice fal-
ter in its devotions. Nancy's will and
Nancy's imagination had always impressed
themselves upon his own will and his own
imagination, and if Xancy had decided that
he was to be beautiful for the pleasing of the
beautiful Sallie, he never doubted that he
would meet the emergency. His heart sang
high.

He found Nancy waitino- for him at the
trj^st with her instruments of magic all at
hand, spread out on a bench beside her.
They were: a pair of huge scissors, a large
gourd of soft lye soap, a rough towel, Jo
Hanks' slender bladed pocket knife and a
small deer horn full of the precious bear
grease, beside which lay a comb and a
roll of flannel for straightening and polish-
ing the black hair. Also her father's
razor was near at hand, with a nice

59

THE MATRIX

foam of lather rubbed into a wooden sau-
cer.

"Shave first," commanded Nancy, as he
came to a halt beside her.

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, you do. The other boys don't, but
your face scratches awful and ain't pretty,"
was the decided answer.

The process was laborious and Nancy be-
gan to watch the lengthening shadows in
fear of not enough daylight for her under-
takings. They did extend themselves nearly
into the candle light ; for the}^ were many.

The shaving accomplished, Nancy at-
tacked the sunbrowned face and excavated
deep into the flaming ears with the rough
towel. She clipped the black shock of hair,
greased it lavishly and finally polished it
with the flannel until it shone like old ma-
hogany. She scoured the large hands and
arms, and even pared and dug around the
rough nails, while Tom sat fairly patient

60

THE MATRIX

and with only slight remonstrances in the
shapes of groans and petitions.

"Just being clean ain't a pain, Tom,"
Nancy soothed as she dug with the sharp
blade under a thumb nail that was dark with
native soil.

"It 's all foohshness," Tom answered as
the deft little fingers began an assault on his
other huge paw.

"When you put on what I 've got in the
wood shed, while I grease up your boots
like Gus', you '11 be just wonderful, Tom,"
Nancy persuaded as she finished wielding
her knife and gave a last polish to the ma-
hogany head.

"Oh, Lordy, what you going to make me
do now?" groaned the martyr to the ro-
mance in young Nancy's breast.

"It 's a white shirt mother let me spin
and weave for you, Tom, all last winter. I
made it by Jo and it is a present for you. I
was going to bleach it two more times be-

61

THE MATRIX

fore you saw it, but you can wear it tonight,
and I '11 put it out in the dew and sun again
after I wash it," answered Xanc}^ as her eyes
danced with the joy of bestowing the gift,
which was the work of art that had occupied
her entire winter's spare moments, and upon
which she had obtained her education at the
wheel of pioneer feminine power.

"Shoo, Nancy, I ain't fitten to wear your
white shirt. Better give it to Uncle Jo."
Tom's face was illumined with both em-
barrassment and great gratitude.

"I made it for you, Tom, 'cause I 'm all
the mother you 've got to weave you white
shirts, and I want you to wear it to please
Miss Sallie at singing. You must, Tom."
Small Nancy pleaded for the white shirt,
pleasure for herself, and the radiant Sallie
in all sincerity.

"All right, Nancy, I '11 do it and thank
you too," Thomas graciously consented.
"Is it in the wood house, j^ou say?"

62

THE MATRIX

"Yes, wrapped in a clean towel, and put
it right on while I get the boots greased as
good as Gus'," Nancy commanded, as she
took up one of the huge rawhide boxes that
Thomas wore upon his wide feet on strictly-
gala occasions, and began the humble office
of greasing them with the fat of the mur-
dered bear.

"My feet don't show when I sing. Shoes
kinder crowd me," Tom pleaded.

"It don't look right to be dressed up at
one end and not the other," Nancy decided
sternly, as she went on with her pohshing.
"Go on, Tom."

And Tom went.

63

CHAPTER IV

IN her management of Tom, Nancy
Hanks evinced the force of a strong per-
sonahtv. Thomas Lincoln yielded to few
people, for he had a force of his own, and
showed it when occasion demanded. He
cared little and consorted less with the boys
of his own age; he liked best to sit and lis-
ten, silently, and intently, to the talk of the
older men, though his expert knowledge on
the food and fur questions often made him
one of the council, and forced upon him a
voice therein. He was accustomed to speak
out whatever he thought, when forced to
speak, and his opinion and decisions were
often so shrewd and well balanced that the
men listened to him and did him the honor

64

THE MATRIX

to argue with him heatedly, when he op-
posed their decisions. Under his slow-
speaking, awkward exterior there were
banked fires that when stirred emitted
tongues of scathing flame. He was re-
spected far beyond his years and disliked far
beyond his deserts, which made him a con-
spicuous personality. What Tom Lincoln
did and said was always the news of the day.
And at all times his huge, ungainly appear-
ance was the target of good-natured fun.

"Tom is so ugly that you shet your eyes
before your nose or ears get wind of him,"
his brother jMordecai was in the habit of
remarking with no particular care that Tom
should not hear him.

And it so happened that the critical Mor-
decai was on hand to watch Tom's appear-
ance from the wood house in the full glory
of the results of all young Nancy's efforts on
him, in the interest of the adored Miss Sallie
Bush, which was unfortunate because Nancy

65

THE MATRIX

really deserved at least a few moments of
unalloyed delight over her handiwork.

There he stood before her with his sleek
hair and red and polished face of sheepish
expression undergirded by the collar of the
first white shirt he had ever had upon his
broad back. It was tucked trimly into the
butternut homespun breeches which were in
turn tucked iiiuo the resplendent greased
boots, and the total vras such that Xancy
clasped her small hands, begrimed with
their ministrations, to her young bosom
swelling v\'ith j^ride, and was about to give
vent to a feminine cry of rapture over her
ugly duckhng, when a huge roar went up
from the throat of ]Mordecai as he lounged
to the back door of the house.

"Well, will vou look at Solomon in all
his glory not arrayed like one of Tom," he
laughed, with ridicule in every tone of his
voice. "Is it the King of England or jest
the President of the States?"

66

THE MATRIX

At the guffaw Susan appeared at the door
and added a treble to Mordecai's bass de-
rision.

In the twinkling of his elder brother's
keen eye, Thomas' glory fell from him and
he was covered with a furious awkwardness
which was about to express itself in no un-
certain terms of rage, when Nancy's anger
beat him to the goal.

"If Tom or anybody was as ugly as your
insides, Mordecai Lincoln, it would kill 'em
dead." The young idealist, capable of la-
boring to materialize a dream of splendor,
and putting herself under its glamour when
obtained, fairly hurled at the big, slouch-
ing, figure in the dooi-way. "You 're an
old dirty dog and don't ever speak to me
again!"

"No, nobody must laugh at Nancy's
pretty boy," Susan rubbed in on the raw.

"Oh — oho — " wailed the young artist, put-
ting her head down onto the little arm, all

67

THE MATRIX

tii-ed out, and smudged with her labor of
love and fairly trembling with rage.

Nancy Hanks being abused was a clarion
call to Thomas Lincoln.

With a deep rage on his serious face and
his large black eyes in a flame, he picked up
a piece of stove wood that lay at his feet
and hurled it straight and murderously at
his brother's head. And if there had not
been the interposition of a faithful little
black shoulder and arm, Thomas Lincoln
would have been a frati'icide and probably
hanged high on a tree, so altering the course
of American History.

But little Runt, the woodsman, was quick
on the trigger as he sprang between the em-
battled brothers.

"Are you dead, Runt?" wailed Xancy as
she flew to the huddled black body, which
fell at the feet of Mordecai and Susan, who
both stood aghast at what might have hap-
pened, rather than what had happened.

68

THE MATRIX

''Yassum, but JMars Tom did n't kill Mars
Mort," wailed the tortured little captive
crow with his arm hanging limp and his
shoulder dragging. Then he fainted away
and failed to hear the emancipation procla-
mation issued over his unconscious body.

Slowly, like one in a dream, Thomas Lin-
coln walked across and stood over Xancy
Hanks as she crouched beside the stricken
negro, and looking his brother full in the
face, said:

"Runt saved your life and me from mur-
der, and I name him a free boy this day."

The declaration hit INIordecai Lincoln full
in his brain like a physical thud and he stag-
gered.

"Don't say that, Tom," he almost en-
treated, as his hand went up as if to pro-
tect himself from a further blow. 'TDon't
let anybody hear you say that, Tom. You
can't free niggers in Kentucky."

"Live or die Runt is free," Tom answered

69

THE MATRIX

calmly and his eyes were so full of a strange
fire that Nancy looked up at him in awe
with her small hand pressed over her hot
Httle heart under her home-spun apron.
JNIardecai stood silent in a like awe while
Susan slunk away out the front door and
down the road, bent on getting out of the
situation and relating it as quickly as pos-
sible to Tom's discredit.

Thus Thomas Lincoln became, probably,
the first active Kentucky abolitionist, an
honor for which he was to pay a bitter price ;
and Nancy Hanks looked up at his assump-
tion of that fate, for which she too was to
pay a price, with glowing eyes.

"Shoo, Tom, pick him up and carry him
to his mammy's cabin and I '11 have the half-
breed Injun doctor fix him when he comes
to look over the sick heifer tonight," Mor-
decai commanded as he came to himself.

"I wisht that chunk of wood had knocked
your head clean off instead of Runt, and I

70

THE MATRIX

hope you die anyway," Nancy raged at INIor-
deeai as she departed with Tom, who car-
ried the moaning httle negro tenderly, while
Nancy sujDj^orted his bare black feet against
her sorrowing little white bosom.

"Don't you grieve, jNIars Tom, Runt will
be a-stealin' jam by sun up tomorrow," old
Jude, the mother comforted, as Tom laid
the Runt on her feather bed under its gay
patched quilt.

"Come home with me, Tom," Nancy com-
manded as they turned away from the negro
cabin door. "I can't stand for Mordecai to
mad you any more."

"Lem 'me go to the woods, Nancy," an-
swered Thomas with a dull ache in his voice
and eyes.

"But I w^ant you to come with me to keep
me from crvin^:," Nancy wooed with the
threatened tears in her big purple ej^es,
which glinted in the dusk that had come
down on the hot earth while it had been the

71

THE MATRIX

scene of the equally hot anger. "And I
want my mother to see how good you look."
A sob almost choked the last demand.

"All right, honey bird," Tom answered
promptly, covering his wound, which he
longed to go away and lick, to soothe his
champion.

The mother of Nancy Hanks was a very
wise and winsome woman, who had been
reared on broad Virginia acres and fostered
in all gentleness, and she knew how to use
her charm to straighten out the many tan-
gles of pioneer existence to which she was
unaccustomed, but which she bore with cour-
age for love of big Joseph Hanks.

Her enthusiastic admiration of Thomas in
party array went far towards toning down
the red of his big clean ears, bring up his
hanging head and restoring the curl and dim-
ples to Nancy's red mouth.

"You '11 have to do a power of titivating
yom-self, Nancy, if you are expecting to go

72

THE MATRIX

to the singing with Thomas and me," she
said after she had listened to the whole story
and smoothed the ragged surfaces of
Nancy's and Thomas' nervous system.
"I 've got on my lace collar and I 've made
me fresh water waves."

The sweet face under the little fluffy white
wave-curls smiled tenderly as she called the
attention of the two hurt children to her own
adornment for tlieir distraction. Her
dainty, high-hred beauty must have struck
a very deep note in the shy awkward boy, for
he laid a long arm around her slender shoul-
ders and hugged her close against the new
white shirt. Then he looked at her as if in
surprise, and there was a note of concern in
his big rich voice as he spoke.

"Aunt Nancy, you ain't got any more heft
on you than a willow switch," he said as he
held her from him and looked at her.
"Don't your victuals meat you up none?"

"Hush, Tom," answered Mother Hanks

73

THE MATRIX

as she gave a quick love glance at big Joseph
coming across the front yard to the porch.
"I 'm all right and I don't want Joseph
worried."

Delicately nurtured Nancy Shipley, who
had followed her husband into the Wilder-
ness, was about to pay the price of her life
for her adventure, which price many other
splendid Virginia women paid, for the build-
ing of Kentucky. She knew it but hid the
fact in all tenderness. As her husband
came into the room she went into his arms
and clung to him in such a way as to get her
lips near his ear.

"Make a compliment to Tom about his
looks," she whispered.

"A^Hiy, Tom Lincoln, j^ou look as big and
upstanding as your grandfather, old Mister
Abraham Lincoln," Uncle Jo declared with
a genuine heartiness in his face and voice,
which made his wife give him an extra pres-
sure of her tender arms as she drew away

74

THE INIATRIX

from him. The praise from his beloved
Uncle Jo immediately put poor Tom's pride
back upon its pedestal, though he smiled in
embarrassment and turned to Nancy, whose
eyes were dancing with delight at her
father's pronouncement.

"Want me to comb out your pig tails and
plate 'em, Nancy?" he offered heroically, for
the combing and plating of Nancy's long
braids was a task dreaded by the whole fam-
ily connection because of the soft fluff of the
red-brown locks which made for agonizing
tangles.

"Yes, comb her, Tom, while I fix up
Joseph," answered Mother Hanks busily.
"Elder Head is here, Joseph, and we are
going to have prayer meeting and a love
feast after the singing."

"Say, Tom, men are just doll babies for
women folks to dress up," was all the pro-
test big Joseph made, as he followed Mother
Hanks into his bedroom.

75

THE MATRIX

The reciprocal grooming which Thomas
bestowed on Nancy was an easier task than
usual, for Nancy realized that time was fly-
ing, and that she must stand with a certain
amount of tranquillity, while the big hands
performed the painful ceremony of unplat-
ing, untangling and replating. She real-
ised that haste must be made if she was to
be fittingly adorned in the little homespun
frock, which had been dyed with polk juice,
the pink of an autumn sunset and which
had in its neck and sleeves a ruffle of fine
white Virginia linen, in time to be of the
party at the singing.

As it was, she and Tom were delayed by
a search for one of the small rawhide shoes,
that she was forced to ease over the pink
bandaged toe, and which was at last found
in the shop where Tom had been pegging a
gap in its flat sole the day before.

"Everybody 's gone in the church, Tom,

but I know none of the other boys have got

76

THE MATRIX

the place by Miss Sallie away from you,"
Nancy gasped as she trotted three steps to
Tom's long one down the road beside him,
her hand in his.

"Shoo," answered Thomas with an indif-
ference he was far from feeling, for the hot
blood of stirring adolescent love was bui'ning
in his cheeks — and also in his sensitive ears.

Of all the desires that had moved the heart
of Thomas Lincoln up to that moment the
strongest was for the seat beside the mule-
imported sprigged muslin and the right to
hold the corner of the wearer's square old
singing book. And this was to be the night
on which he was to put his fate to the touch.
He knew that the whole settlement had been
nudging its elbows and smiling at the fact
that Tom Lincoln was "noticing" Sallie
Bush, and Nancy had succeeded in convinc-
ing him that his adornment had made sure
of the conquest.

Thus it was with the confidence of a con-

77

THE MATRIX

queror, Thomas Lincoln entered the church
with Nancy beside him, though she almost
immediately turned awav from him and
made her way to a bench beside her mother,
directly opposite the left corner of the log
room in which the singers usually occupied
all the seats.

And then it happened.

Nancy was just preparing to seat herself
beside her mother, turning first to observe
the tall figure of the swan, who had been her
ugly duckling, stride up the aisle and take
the place coveted by every boy in the settle-
ment, which she was sure would be reserved
for him, when she stood stock still with dis-
may.

Things had gone wrong.

The entire population of the settlement
was seated, ready for the elder to rise and
line out the fii-st hymn, in which they were
to be led by the choir, a dozen young people
seated in the left "Amen corner," and their

78

THE MATRIX

eyes were fixed upon that spot to witness
the fact that when Thomas Lincoln, in all
his glory, arrived to culminate his "notic-
ing" of Sallie Bush, his divinity failed to
sweep aside her skirts of mule-imported mus-
lin and offer him the desired corner of her
book, but gave a little hitch of one shoulder
and a fluff of the skirts, which clearly indi-
cated that if Thomas was to sit in the singers'
corner it would have to be alone on a long
front bench. And in the midst of a titter-
ing silence, Thomas subsided upon the cor-
ner of the empty seat, alone, facing an au-
dience before which in a second he would
have to rise and sing.

But the world was never to reckon
Thomas Lincoln without adding Nancy
Hanks to his sum total. When Thomas
faced his world in abashment, Lincoln Set-
tlement's most prominent citizen, young
Nancy Hanks, stood beside hun, singing
away for dear hfe in a full bird voice from

79

THE MATRIX

her mother's huge hymn book, the corner
of which Thomas held. And the witheruig
glance bestowed upon the faithless friend
from the big violet eyes held all the tragedy
of a betrayed hero-worshipper.

Great as was the humiliation of this public
flaunting to Thomas Lincoln, it was when
he heard the cause that the iron entered his
soul, which hardened him to an opinion and
a purpose with which he lived and died. It
was not until the singing, in which his rich
deep voice blended with Nancy's bird-like
flute to the shaming of the rest of the sing-
ers, including the small but tuneful twitter
that rose from beneath the tucker of Miss
Sallie's sprigged dimity, was over, the scrip-
tures read, and the prayers offered that
Thomas learned the cause of his hmniliation.

According to his custom of monthly meet-
ings in the Settlement, Elder Head con-
cluded his services with what ^lethodism
called at that date and down the future, a

80

THE MATRIX

Love Feast. A ceremonj^ at which brother
and sister were expected to speak up and
accuse and forgive brother and sister. Nat-
urally the service was at all times attended
with no small excitement, but upon this oc-
casion there was plainly a weighty matter to
be threshed out. And though he was ig-
norant of it, upon the shoulders of Thomas
Lincoln the flail of pubhc opinion was to
fall.

"And now, brothers and sisters, I invite
you to speak what is in your heart one for
another, in all neighborly feeling among fol-
lowers of our Lord." Brother Head gave
the invitation with anxiety in his gentle

face.

Iimnediately Susan Lincoln rose from be-
side her husband, though his hand had been
laid out to restrain her.

"I wish the reproof of this congregation
upon Thomas Lincoln fer the rage what led
him to free a nigger," the rough and vindic-

81

THE MATRIX

tive woman drawled out with more than
rage, positive fury, flaming in her own red
face. A murmur of consternation came
from the majority of the settlers, who thus
for the first time were hearing that the dread
and awful act, abolition, had been committed
in their community. However, the know-
ing and contemptuous smile on the face of
Sallie Bush, the rest of the singers and a
few others of the congregation showed that
Susan had been about her malicious busi-
ness in the several hours that had elapsed
between the emancipation of the Runt and
the gathering of the congregation.

"Free a nigger! Poor Tom!" SalHe
whispered with a contemptuous giggle to
Gus Harding, who had slipped into the cov-
eted place beside her, when he had beheld
her flouting of Tom. Mr. Bush was the
largest slave holder in the settlement and
he sat glaring at Tom from half way back

in the church.

82

THE MATRIX

"That white shirt hit him loony," an-
swered Gus with a suppressed guflPaw that
died away as the elder turned and looked
past Thomas, the abolitionist, to Mordecai,
the head of the family, for an answer to the
charge against this minor member.

"Jest git after Tom for his temper, Elder!
That ain't nothing to the nigger freeing
business," JNIordecai answered with easy un-
concern.

He should have known Thomas Lincoln
better.

Tom rose to his feet in all his unaccus-
tomed finery and faced the keen eyes fixed
on him, which were unfriendly and fierce be-
cause of his materialization of a dread,
which was to mature in the future to take
from them property honestly acquired, but
which they all held with uneasy consciences.

Then Thomas Lincoln made his crude
speech, which was to become coherent years
later at Gettysburg.

83

THE MATRIX

"I beg Mort's pardon for the temper,
Elder, but Runt is free and is going ter stay
that way. I hold it is a sin to slave any
human critter." With which proclamation
Tom brought down upon himself a storm of
protest. And as he stood before them all,
in his hand had rested the hand of small
Nancy Hanks, while around the two raged
a roaring sea of argument, accusation, refu-
tation, protest and vilification.

But Elder Jesse Head had survived many
serious "love feasts," in which property
rights, connubial rights and the subject of
infant damnation had been threshed out, and
he knew when to pour oil on the troubled
waters.

"Well, brethren and sisters, we '11 leave
this whole matter to the Lord and commend
prayerful consideration of it to those mostly
concerned," he declaimed, a formula tried
many times successfully. "Let us receive
the benediction."

84

THE MATRIX

"And now may the grace of god be
with us and guide us this day for

THE SAKE OF JESUS CHRIST. AmEN !"

And the men and women who stood with
bent heads to receive that benediction, filed
out with dark glances of condemnation at
Thomas Lincoln, as he walked among them,
hand in hand with Nancy Hanks.

Down the road the boy, who had made
himself a pariah and the child who loved him,
walked silently in the starlight. "Git to
bed, Nancy," Tom commanded at the Hanks
gate, as he put her from him when she would
have clung; and he walked away from her
across the road and into the sanctuary of the
great forest.

An hour later when big Joseph Hanks
was about to extinguish the last candle in
the log house, he heard a sound of weeping
from the corner where Nancy slept. Since
the savages had almost stolen her from him,

85

THE MATRIX

he always took a last look at the dark head
on the pillow before going to his rest, and
he set down the candle and bent over her as
he heard the smothered sobs.

"What is it, sweetling?" he asked tenderly.

"Tom! Oh, go git Tom! He's gone
into the woods," was the wailing answer.

"Tom kin take keer of himself in any
woods," big Joseph answered with comfort-
ing assurance.

"I want him to stay in this house always,
so nobody will dare to talk ugly to him. Go
git him. Daddy."

"Yes, we '11 have to take Tom now, Joe,"
Mother Hanks said as she came to the bed-
side and put her thin cheek down against
Nancy's hot httle face. "He can't live with
Susan and Mort after this."

"Well, can't I adopt Tom Lincoln before
breakfast tomorrow morning and go to sleep
now, Nancy?" asked Joseph with a smile of
ready consent at the petition of his two be-

86

THE MATRIX

loved women for protection for the young
abolitionist.

"Yes," faltered Nancy, content for the
moment with the promise of her father's
guardianship for her unfortunate.

Then while darkness and sleep settled
down upon the Lincoln Settlement, out in
the dark forest Thomas Lincoln lay with his
face pressed to the bosom of the land he was
helping to conquer, and he was drenching the
soil with as bitter tears as had been or ever
would be shed upon its richness. Part of
the hurt was the loss of the promise of bud-
ding love, a glimpse of which he had caught
in the eyes of the young pioneer girl, and the
agony of it ached with the pulse of the blood
in the veins of his huge, strong, man-boy
body, but in his soul there burned a fiercer
fire, the conflagration that is always raised
by injustice. The conviction of the inherent
right to human freedom, which had caught
fire at a spark struck out by small Nancy

87

THE MATRIX

beside the captive poults, in whose condition
she had seen a likeness to her own savage
trapping and tying, had grown with his
growth until it had become to him an obli-
gation for which he must be willing to suffer.
The dramatic freeing of the Runt had been
but the hasty culmination of an intention
which he had been cherishing and for which
he had been biding the time of his own more
powerful and commanding manhood. And
yet what was to bring order in the chaos of
his immature boy's heart and mind? All the
men of power in his small world owned slaves
and were eagerly buying more, for upon
their labor was being rapidly built a great
Commonwealth. Who was he to stand up
alone and call them to account? Where
could he get the strength to withstand their
anger, scorn and derision? Would he have
always to face the black looks that had been
oast at him that night, which was to have
been the occasion of his love triumph?

88

THE MATRIX

"Sallie and everybody '11 hate me now,"
he sobbed under his breath as he pressed his
ugly face into the dust.

"Not me, Tom," came a soft answer to his
wail out of the leaf-shadowed darkness, and
Nancy huddled down beside him with her
cheek pressed upon the bear-greased hair on
the back of his head. "I love you, an- all the
rest of the mean folks don't make any differ-
ence at all. If we want to turn things aloose
we '11 do it."

The results of that pact were far reach-
ing.

89

CHAPTER V

THE small epidemic of abolition fever
ran its course in Lincoln Settlement
very true to its national type. After the
high temperature of public opinion over
Thomas Lincoln's freeing of the Runt had
reached its cuhninating scene in the love
feast, the very next day things became more
normal, though there was still bad blood evi-
denced for the champion of freedom. The
men of the Settlement met the sullen boy
with averted eye or sneering glances, and
the women of their households followed their
example, with only added hurts. For a
number of days Sallie Bush passed the
young carpenter by with only a swish of
her skirts, but eventually she came home to
supper with Betsy Hanks, about ten days
after the tragedy, and was ingenuous enough

90

THE MATRIX

to inquire for Tom, when he failed to put in
his appearance at the evening repast of his
new home. He was represented, however,
by wild turkey, grape jelly, walnut pickle
and Nancy.

"Is n't Tom Lincoln living with you now,
Mrs. Hanks?" Sallie had asked as she seated
herself by tall William Hanks, while Eliza-
beth Hull, whom William was industriously
"noticing," eyed her askance from a seat be-
side big Joseph. Tom on his adoption into
the Hanks famity had been given the chair
beside sweet Mother Hanks, and upon that
particularly festive occasion it was notice-
ably empty. Next to the vacant seat stood
young Nancy, and as the fallen idol made
her inquiry, the youngest member of the
Hanks family finished piling two plates high
with all the most choice food on the table,
added a huge dab of well nigh all the jelly
and stood poised for departure. But before
she went she thus delivered herself:

91

THE MATRIX

"Me and Tom likes to eat together out in
the woods when folks we don't like is visit-
ing us," with which she swept from the log
room with her stately little head poised so
high that she was in danger of falling over
backwards.

"Switch tea is the only medicine that
would do her any good," remarked William
Hanks, in a temper over this insult to the
young lady visiting at the hospitable par-
ental board.

"The tree ain't planted yet that '11 grow a
switch for my Nancy," laughed Nancy's
father.

"She '11 come back presently and make
her manners," Mother Hanks promised with
an apologetic tone of voice, but a twinkle
in her eyes that matched her husband's
laugh.

However, Nancy did not return and
make her apologies. She was engaged in
witnessing a scene of a great sentiment,

92

THE MATRIX

which has made its impression on the Amer-
ican national character and institutions.

The Runt had got away from maternal
authority and had come hunting for Tom
like a dog for its master. His shoulder was
in a rude splint and a white rag encircled
his bullet head. He flung himself out of
the woods, and at Tom and Nancy's feet, as
they sat astride a log with the two high-
piled plates between them.

"Miss Susie said I must n't come ter you,
Marse Tom, 'cause you had done give me
away," he panted. "But I broke aloose and
come a-running. Oh, Marse Tom, say I 'm
your nigger and you ain't flung me away."
The pleading on the poor little crow's face
was an agony.

"I did n't give you away, Runt, I freed
you," Tom answered with affection fairly
shining in his solemn eyes.

"Don't say that, Marse Tom, don't say
that!" pleaded the Runt, dropping on his

93

THE MATRIX

knees before the abolitionist, who had given
him a man's most precious possession.
"What 's a nigger going to do that don't
belong to nobody?"

The question asked by the Runt in agony,
rose from hundreds of thousands of black
throats after Juty fourth, eighteen sixty -two,
and its echo has not entirely died away even
unto this day.

The question was up to Thomas Lincoln
and it staggered him. However, Xancy
Hanks had the same solution ready to offer
that was used by the women of the Confed-

ft'

eracy when they were left with helpless freed-
men to feed and control while the men of
their family fought over their destinies.

"You go right on working, and, trade
work for what you need," Xancy said, as she
picked up a broad plantin leaf and put a
generous dinner from her own plate and
Tom's upon it, for the sustainhig of the new-
fledged freedman. Her Southern feminine

94

THE MATRIX

posterity promptly gave the liberated slaves
an acre and a mule with which to work, and
shared the crops thus produced, so institut-
ing an economic system which holds in the
South even unto this day. The men who
had fought with conviction of right to hold
their slaves, returned to find that their
women had harnessed the f reedmen to plows
to the interest of everybody concerned.

"Go working in the woods jest the same?"
questioned the Runt with relief in his big
black eyes.

"Jest the same," ratified Tom, as he rose
and stretched his long arms as Nancy handed
the dinner to the Runt, who squatted down
on his big heels to consume it.

But the fate of the Runt was not that
easily settled, and it hung a dark cloud on
the horizon of the fate of Thomas Lincoln.
On the surface things went on as before,
Runt living in his mother's cabin and work-
ing as before, but the matter was not ended

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THE MATRIX

— it was to be the crisis of Thomas LincoLi's
hfe history.

The summer that Tom lived under the
Hanks roof with Mother Hanks and Nancy,
his chief friend, though the Hanks boys
were friendly and big Joseph always kind,
was perhaps the most constructive period
of his life. His own crude ideals became
crystalhzed and he found new ones.

When the crisp autumn days came, he
worked hard at the shop until the light
failed, then he would tramp off into the
woods to bring in wild grapes for the jelly,
nuts for curing and herbs for drying. In
the long evenings he boiled down to sugar
the syrup he had got from tapping the
maple trees in the spring in the wide fire-
place in which it was pleasant to have a brisk
fire. Wilham and Jo and the girls often
went down to the Log Tavern for singing,
and the dancing of Virginia reels, while ap-

96

THE MATRIX

pies were roasted and corn popped, but Tom
always stayed at home with Nancy and
Mother Hanks, and the quiet evenings were
very precious to him.

As the brilliant autumn days began to
vanish earlier and earlier over the tree tops,
from which winter was gradually stealing
the mantles of gold and crimson and brown,
and the frosty nights grew longer, sweet
Mother Hanks drew into the chimney corner
and kept her little homespun wool shawl
wrapped closer about her thin shoulders.
Opposite her sat big Joseph, in his heart of
hearts grieving over her failing strength,
but keeping up his courage even to himself.
Before the hearth Nancy and Tom carried
on various winter activities, from the sugar
boilings and the sorting and laying away of
garden and field seeds to Nancy's spinning,
for which Tom carded the wool and cotton.

Then when the work was well in hand,

97

THE MATRIX

Tom would reach up for a large candle, light
it, set it on a table by Mother Hanks and
make his nightly plea :

"Read, Aunt Nancy, read!"

And to the boy and girl, who were some
day to form the mould from which was cast
the foremost American, the frail pioneer
woman would read from the few volumes
that she had brought from Virginia. "Pil-
grim's Progress" delighted Nancy and a
precious "^sop's Fables" was a continuous
source of pleasure to big Joseph Hanks, but
Tom never tired of the "Psalms of David,"
and he always wanted the story of the de-
liverance of the Israelites out of Egj^pt. As
he stirred and dipped and poured the golden
mass of maple juice from kettle to kettle
and back again, his dark eyes would glow in
the firelight as the gentle voice read on
through the stirring story from the Lord's
proclamation to Moses:

98

THE MATRIX

"I have also heard the groaning of the
children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep
in bondage, and I have remembered my
covenant — and I will bring you out from
under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I
will rid you out of their bondage — "

through the long wandering of the freedman
to the Divine command:

"Moses my servant is dead, now therefore
arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all thy
people, unto the land which I do give to
them."

"A mighty story, a mighty story," big
Joseph would comment between puffs from
his corn cob pipe. "That Moses led a whole
nation of people to freedom. Seems a pity
he could n't go into the promised land with
'em and get some of the credit."

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THE MATRIX

"But he started 'em, he started 'em,"
Thomas would mutter as he poured a spoon-
ful of the golden and thickening syrup on
a cedar chip and passed it up for Nancy's
judgment as to its sugaring off.

The story of Moses planted in the heart
of Thomas Lincohi was to bear its fruit
down the ages.

Then during some of the long evenings
big Joseph would hold forth, and the thing
that most interested both Tom and Nancy
were his tales of what their families had done
"back in Virginia and still beyont."

The favorite story of Nancy was of the
participation of one of Tom's ancestors,
Captain Ockley Lincoln, in the Boston Tea
Party.

"And did they jest up and throw all that
tea away into the water because they wanted
to be free of England, Daddy?" she would
ask with sparkling eyes, for energetic action
always appealed to Nancy. "I reckon the

100

THE MATRIX

ocean tasted like tea for a week. I wisht
he 'd been my antsister, Daddy, 'stead of
Tom's!"

"Shoo, Nancj%" Tom would answer as his
kernels of corn popped into white fluffy balls,
"I '11 trade him for them Hanks men what
poured the iron fer the hlg liberty Hell
with it written on it 'Proclaim liberty
throughout all the land nnd untf) all the in-
habitants thereof.' "

"Now don't go and trade her your uncle
Levi Lincoln, what the President appointed
Associate Justice of the States, Tom. Your
Grandpa Lincoln set great store by him and
used to go visit him in I'hiladelphia. He
was a Secretary of State oncet and helped
make out the constitution to run Massa-
chusetts by. Don't never trade your Uncle
l^evi away, Tom. He is a statesman and
you must try to be one too." As he spoke
Joseph Hanks smiled indulgently at the
awkward, ignorant boy before him, who

101

THE MATRIX

seemed but a scion of the Lincolns gone to
seed.

In the future his seed was to be the great-
est of them all.

"I don't want his Uncle Levi, I want that
soldier, Mister Lincoln, at Yorktown bat-
tle," Nancy answered, as she made her
wheel whirl and spin as dexterously as ever
her mother had done. "It was from him
that the eagle, with the snake in his claws,
got on Tom's father's powder horn. I hke
fighting, I do."

"His grandfather over in England had a
red cross with a gold star in the middle of
it worked on his uniform. You might work
one on Tom's shirt for him, Nancy, when you
ain't busy," big Joseph teased.

"You can have it to put on your bonnet,
Nancy," Thomas said, as he stirred his pop-
ping corn and again dipped and poured
the sugaring syrup from the ladle.

His hereditary red cross with a golden

102

THE MATRIX

star would have been a fitting emblem to
blazon on the arm of poor Tom Lincoln,
who had the right to them from his fathers
and whose son would prove it a fitting in-
signia.

"Well, let 's don't make fun about our
forefathers, but be thankful they were good
and gallant gentlemen," Mother Hanks' soft
voice rather mused than reproved. "Help
me to bed, Joseph."

"Ain't Aunt Nancy getting weaker,
Nancy?" Tom questioned with uneasiness in
his large affectionate eyes that followed his
Uncle Joseph's big frame as he bore his deli-
cate wife into her bedroom.

"I don't know, is she, Tom?" Nancy ques-
tioned with fright in her eyes as she snapped
her thread and let her wheel slow down.

"Hush, don't let on before Uncle Jo. He
can't stand it," Tom cautioned as the burly
pioneer came back into the room.

"S'posen you read us a Psalm, Nancy,"

103

THE MATRIX

said big father Joseph, who was always con-
sumed with pride when he watched the dark
red head bent over the big book and heard
the sweet voice intone the excellent words of
David, the singer.

Then came last nights for the little con-
clave around the fire. Big Joseph Hanks
was not to be called upon to "stand" the
loss of the wife of his bosom. In the late
fall he was taken with a congestive chill
from being too long out in the first and un-
expected snow fall, and died in less than a
week. All the while he was ill, Mother
Hanks sat beside him with that quiet forti-
tude a courageous soul in a weak body often
shows, and her hand clasped his firmly until
it grew cold. She lived less than a month,
for there are some hearts that are so closely
knit that when either is amputated, the other
bleeds to death; and their union is apt to
produce such as Nancy Hanks and her
progeny.

104

THE MATRIX

The night before the mother's going, she
sent her two oldest girls and the boys from
the room and drew her youngest child,
Nancy, close against her pillow with her
feeble arms.

"I don't know why, Nancy, but it is in my
heart to say something to you that you won't
understand now. It seems like a message
and you must remember it. Love your man
when you get one, hard, Nancy, and believe
in him and follow him even to your death.
A blessing will come of it. Remember!"

And Nancy remembered. The blessing
which came was the heritage of a nation.

Snowflakes that were like bits of feathers
from the wings of the archangels floated
silently from the skies down through the
stark branches of the great forest trees un-
der which they buried sweet, brave, gentle
Nancy Hanks beside the pioneer lover she
had followed into the fastness of the great
new Commonwealth on which her love was

105

THE MATRIX

to leave so deep a mark, and covered her
grave with an immaculate pall.

That night there was a solemn and heart-
broken conclave in the parentless Hanks
home. Around the huge hearth was as-
sembled the whole family and husky voices
discussed what was best to do for the be-
reaved.

And as usual, good Richard Berry had the
deciding voice.

"As Betsy is going to be joined in wed-
lock with Levi Hall so soon, and she wants
to stav by him here, it will be best for Mor-
decai and Susan to give her shelter until
that cuhnination," he adjudged thought-
fuUv.

"Welcome she '11 be. Uncle Berry," spoke
up Mordecai promptly, with a sharp and
commanding look at rough Susan, who this
time rose to the occasion with less acidity
than usual.

106

THE MATRIX

"She 'II be a power of help," the aunt
agreed. "Aunt Nancy has made good spin-
ners and weavers of her girls."

"And me and Thomas Sparrow have got
a place in our home and hearts for Polly and
Nancy," spoke up Elizabeth Sparrow
quickly, as if to get in her claim before any
other could be voiced.

"Polly, yes, Sister Sparrow, but- — " at this
point Richard Berry's big voice faltered and
he held out his arms to Nancy, who sat
crouched on the floor across the hearth from
him with Tom Lincoln's arm around her and
with her great eyes dark, brilliant with cour-
ageously controlled tears. Straight as an
arrow she flew into the arms held out to her
and as her beloved Uncle Berry clasped her
close, gentle Lucy, his wife, bent and patted
the gray and red heads pressed close to-
gether. She knew how far short his two
rough boys had fallen in filling his paternal

107

THE MATRIX

heart, which had always yearned enviously
over the Hanks treasure with her purple
eyes and vigorous disposition.

"William and Jo and Tom can manage to
make out with Susan and Betsy a-looking
after 'em and they can keep on with the
business," said Mordecai, making a decision
in which the three Hanks boys acquiesced
with nods of their head.

"Tom 's going with me," spoke up Nancy
quickly, when she heard this mention of Tom
as he sat silent in the shadow. '

"Shoo, honey, we can't do without Tom,
fer a while yit," big Mordecai hastened to
say. "Tom, he 's the master shingler in the
Settlement and they is six. houses to roof in
with snow flying already. You don't want
nobody to freeze, do you?"

All of the family knew that the only ap-
peal from her will that swayed young Nancy
was one made to her sympathies, and they
also knew that as she sat beside Uncle

108

THE MATRIX

Berry's knee her position was invincible and
her dictums were not to be questioned.

"Granny Hendricks is mighty old to have
a leaking roof in winter," Jo Hanks cau-
tiously ventured into the conversation. All
eyes were turned on Nancy as she decided
the question of the present residence and
activity of Thomas.

"I '11 let him stay this winter, but when
leaves bloom out again, he '11 have to come
where I am," Nancy decided thoughtfully.
"You '11 come to me, Tom, won't you?"

"Yes, I '11 come after you," Tom prom-
ised, with rehef written all over his somber
face, for the removal into a strange com-
munity would have tried his bashful soul be-
yond measure. His ponderous imagination
had not shown him a world devoid of Nancy.
It was only dimly revealed to him the next
day, when he put her down in the straw in
the wagon bed in which she was to be sledded
away from him through the great forest,

109

THE MATRIX

over whose white blanket of snow rested a
gray veil of mist, lined with the black of the
tree-trunks and boughs and twigs.

"Don't forget me, honey bird," he said,
and then as Richard Berry stood up and
cracked his whip over the backs of the two
horses hitched to the sled, he put his rough
cheek against hers and held her close.

"Never, Tom," she said quietly as she
clutched at him for a second before the
plunging horses tore her away from him.

It was well that neither Tom nor Nancy
knew that their separation was to last a
dozen years.

119

CHAPTER VI

IT was into a very different world from
Lincoln Settlement that the steaming
horses sledded ten-year-old Nancy Hanks.
The decade that stretched from 1790 to 1800
was and remains one of the most potent in
the annals of American History. A steady
stream of settlers, with their huge wagons,
flocks, herds and household goods, had
poured across the Appalachian range into
the Mississippi Valley, by a road that Nature
had built of the bridle paths of the pioneers;
and they had settled themselves around the
outposts and stockades set up by the hardy
pioneers from Boone to Robinson. In the
caravans came skilled workmen from across
the ocean, who began to build forges and
make machinery for the clearing and culti-
vating of the broad acres. In 1790, less

111

THE MATRIX

than two hundred thousand pounds of cot-
ton were exported from the States, which
were at that time struggling one by one to
ratify the Union that had been offered them,
but in 1793 Eh Whitney invented the cot-
ton gin in Georgia, and in 1800 America
sent across the water nearly twenty million
pounds. The South began to grow rich,
even as it cleared its forests, and the whole
Mississippi Valley teemed with energetic
life.

The case of the little settlement at Pleas-
ant Grove, which grew into Elizabethtown,
was typical. When Nancy Hanks had
come down the Wilderness Trail with her
parents and uncles and aunts, the Berrys
and Sparrows had left the Hankses and Lin-
colns in their cabins on Lincoln Creek, and
gone deeper into the Dark and Bloody
Ground. They had staked out their lands a
few miles beyond Elizabethtown, which was
at a crossing of the roads that were trav-

112

THE MATRIX

elled by the emigrants going into Tennessee
and Ohio, and which had grown hke the
proverbial mushroom, far outdistancing the
Lincoln Settlement.

As Nancy was sledded through the village,
a bright wintry morning in late November,
her big purple eyes were wide open with
eager astonishment as she beheld the poplar
log court house built in the center of a square,
around whose decorous lines were planted a
number of other houses not built of logs,
but of crude brick laid with mud.

"How did they nail those houses, Uncle
Berry?" Nancy demanded, as she stood up
in the sled and craned her neck out over the
high front seat.

"Stuck 'em together with mud, sweet-
ling," answered Mr. Berry with a pleased
laugh at Nancy's powers of observation.

"I thought all houses was made outen
logs," she said, still looking back at the in-
teresting houses without nails, as Mr. Berry

113

THE MATRIX

turned off the public square into the road
that led out to Beechland.

"We 've got boards nailed over the logs
in our house, Nancy," said Frank Berry
with a laugh. "Only country folks live in
log houses." Frank spoke with the conde-
scension of fifteen years to ten and got the
retort that is usually given between those
ages, only Nancy's answer showed the quick
wit to which she had been born.

"Logs raise up better manners than
planks," she sniffed, with a flare of dignified
anger from her big eyes.

"She winged you there, son, and I '11 limb
you if you ever again give her cause for a
shot like that," said IMr. Berry as he drove
his steaming team along the road towards
the plank-covered log abode. "A boy with
a sister has got to make his steps slide easy
and cautious like."

"Yes, Pa," answered Frank meekly.

"Welcome, Nancy, and may this be a true

114<

THE MATRIX

home to you," Uncle Berry said as he stepped
down over the runners and held up his arms
to the bereaved child.

Perhaps what comforted Nancy most in
her first hard orphaned days was the finding
of Sarah Mitchell in the Berry household.
Xancy had heard of Sarah's return after
the Wayne Indian treaty, but it seemed too
good to be true, to go off in a corner and sit
with Sarah's arm around her and hear about
the five years of captivity with the old squaw
in the tepee. Such stories were a never fail-
ing diversion from her loss.

"Let me tell you about what the Indian
did when he found your chewed rope that
morning," Sarah would offer if she waked
and found Nancy deep in the tears of mother
hunger in the dead of night on the pillow
next to hers.

"What did he do?" Nancy would stop
sobbing to ask, though she had heard it over
and over. ^

115

THE MATRIX

"He whipped his squaw first and then—"

And gentle Sarah never failed to be sur-
prised by Nancy's showing her judicial tem-
perament by remarking:

"That squaw oughter watched when he
told her to."

And with Sarah in it the Berry home was
a real home for Nancy the next decade of
her life. The house was wide and comfort-
able and very typical of the homes that the
pioneers achieved for themselves, after the
days of "settling" had passed. The orig-
inal log cabin of some thirty square feet had
first been duplicated, with an open porch be-
tween the new room and the old. Then
wings and lean-tos had been built and the
whole covered in with a wide shingled roof,
in which dormer windows had been cut to
make available the large space under the
arched timbers. Then an enterprising
Scotchman had come along to build a crude
saw-mill, and forthwith the log homes of the

116

THE MATRIX

well-to-do inhabitants of what had now been
named the township of Beechland, and of
Elizabethtown a few niiles away, were cov-
ered with wide rough planks, which soon
weathered to a soft gray.

Back of the Berry home rolled away more
than a hundred acres, which Richard Berry,
his bovs and a few slaves obtained from trad-
ers, had cleared and planted with cotton,
which soared in price by the month. Inside
the house were all the comforts obtainable.
Mule pack merchants had begun to stream
out from the manufacturing centers of the
Atlantic Coast, and they brought with them
everything from thin china and silverware
to exquisite purple and fine linen for the
adorning of the gentry for a gala occasion.
However, the majority of the population of
Beechland and Elizabethtown was still
clothed in homespun woven from the prod-
ucts of the fields near at hand.

And it was at the loom that Nancy first

117

THE MATRIX

distinguished herself and put herself in line
to become as prominent a citizen of Beech-
land and Elizabethtown as of Lincoln
Creek.

"Well, Nancy, how about Miss Kille-
brew's Dame School in Elizabethtown after
Christmas," Uncle Berry had said to the
young lady in his house one evening after
supper, as they all sat around the fire in the
big living-room which was bright with a rag-
woven carpet, white cotton curtains and a
melodeon in the corner, which had been a
burden borne by two weary mules all the
way from Philadelphia.

"I can read better'n Milly Hume or Jean
Robinson right now^ and they 're sixteen,"
answered Nancy, as she turned her wheel
and set the fine white cotton thread running
through her slim little fingers onto the huge
wooden bodkin. "My mother knew more
than Miss Killebrew and she taught — " here
the firm young voice broke and tears glit-

118

THE MATRIX

tered on the swiftly moving fingers which
did not falter at their task, even under the
stress of an aching and lonely heart.

"Yes, and Nancy is a whole lot prettier 'n
any girl in Elizabethtown," young Ned
Berry hastened to exclaim with the loyalty
of a deep affection, which had grown in his
heart for his young foster sister. "I bet
two bits her hair is a foot longer than any
girl's that lives there."

"Well, as that is the case, of course Nancy
don't need to go to school," agreed Uncle
Berry with a twinkle in his eye as the dim-
ples broke cover around Nancy's mouth,
even while the last tear was dripping from
her eyes.

"Yes, Sister Nancy always took more edu-
cation than the rest of us sisters," said Aunt
Lucy from her chair over in the chimney
corner. "Nobody could want any more
education than she had, and I expect she
gave most of hers to Nancy."

119

THE INIATRIX

"But maybe I have n't got enough, so I '11
go to school some," Nancy decided for her-
self, in a capable young voice, as she whirled
her wheel. "Most of the time I 'm going
to learn to make dyes out of wood things
like Tom was teaching me and weave cloth
in patterns for trade."

The mother of Abraham Lincoln was
probably the first woman in Kentucky to
enter trade and secui'e her own financial in-
dependence. By the time she was sixteen,
Nancy Hanks was dyeing and weaving fab-
rics that competed with those of the mule
pack and prairie schooner merchants. At
that age of feminine enchantment she was
very tall and broad and high headed and
clean limbed. She clothed her beautiful
budding young body in her own choicest
weaves, and their cut was so suited to her
lithe young lines that she strongly resembled
a lady of very high degree as she went along
her independent course of existence in and

120

THE MATRIX

out and around and about Elizabethtown,
into which she rode whenever she chose.
And nobody could deny that she was one
of the small metropolis' most prominent citi-
zens. Where Nancy Hanks happened to
be, there was the center of interest.

Xow Elizabethtown had reached that
stage of its development from its settlement
days at which the inhabitants begin to di-
vide themselves into arbitrary groups, finan-
cial, cultural and religious.

Sandy JNIacGill had added a very good
brick kiln to his now numerous saw mills,
and he and Xed Berry, with his father's fi-
nancial aid and advice, were becoming first-
class builders of the sturdy, bewinged houses
with white columns supporting the roofs of
their front porches, over which roses of im-
ported English variety vireathed themselves.
And in the stately parlors constructed by
Sandy and Xed, which were often planned
out on paper by Xancy Hanks, on the win-

121

THE MATRIX

ter nights with Ned before the Berry log
fire out at Beechland, there had come spin-
nets and melodeons, Enghsh chintz curtains,
French damask, and also imported fine man-
ners.

"Say, Nancy, Milly Hume got home
from that Philadelphia school today, and
they have learned all remembers of me outen
her head," Frank Berry laughed as he filled
his pipe and looked at the crude architec-
tural sketch Nancy was making for Ned to
use in constructing the eight-room house in
which the father of the highly educated
Milly expected to cage her. "Maybe my
leather apron and tool box was what you call
a disguise to her."

"Milly's head ain't big enough to hold you
and a blue silk parasol at the same time,
Frank," Nancy laughed with good-humored
toleration. She had herself received a frigid
salutation from Miss Hume that afternoon

122

THE MATRIX

in Elizabethtown, and she had been ponder-
ing it.

Two summers later Miss INIildred Hume,
Miss Jean Robinson and a half dozen other
feminine scions of the leading families of
Washington County, Kentucky, were grad-
uated back to their native heath, and about
that time a still larger number of masculine
young bloods got back from the foreign
cities of Boston, New York and Philadel-
phia, where they had been sent for a cul-
tural inlay upon their backwoods manhood.
Thereupon social distinctions were for the
first time laid down. On the Public Square
Pioneers Hume and Robinson and Meri-
weather, in their purple and fine linen, still
eagerly met Pioneers Berry and Sparrow
and Hull and Clancy in their dark-eyed and
dignified homespun, slapped each other on
the back and swapped trapper tales and
political opinions of Thomas Jefferson and

123

THE MATRIX

Henry Clay. They cordially bestowed
choice wads of tobacco try-outs upon each
other which led to the barter of hogsheads,
even barnfuls, of the luscious and delicious
weed. Nothing, neither wealth nor poverty
nor travel nor politics, could come between
these men who had conquered a Common-
wealth together ; but their children were dig-
ging a social gulf they neither noticed nor
understood or even cared about.

"Over in Elizabethtown I heard that Gid
Robinson's girl was giving a kinder home
coming tonight and you young folks had
better get to titivating yourselves for it
early," Richard Berry had said one after-
noon in the early summer, when all of the
social world of Elizabethto^vn were aged
from eighteen to twenty-two.

"We 're going to a candy pull over at the
Hulls, Uncle Berry," answered Nancy, as
she crimped a white tucker in a fine blue cot-
ton dress she had spun, woven, dyed and

THE MATRIX

made for herself, which had in it purple
lights like those in her lovely eyes and in
which she was to be much more lovely than
Jean Robinson in her Philadelphia dimity,
and of which fact she was to get exact proof
a few hours later.

"Well, why don't you young people frolic
together and save lights and fire and maple
sugar?" innocent Mr. Berry asked, as he
passed into the house.

At about the same moment over in Eliza-
bethtown Mr. Gideon Robinson was saying
to the young beruffled and belaced damsel of
his household:

"What 's the use in your having a party
when they are having a candy pull out at
Beechland at Ben Hull's, daughter^ Why
upset two families and tramp candy into two
kitchens at once?"

Jean failed to answer him, but young
Clinton Meriweather, who was seated before
the spinnet, picking out a tune then popular

125

THE MATRIX

in the coffee houses of Philadelphia, from
which city he had just returned after a
number of years' educational sojourn, turned
and presented a face of considerable interest.

"I wonder if Nancy Hanks will be there?"
he asked.

"Sure to, and where Nancy is there is
going to be a gTeat frolic," answered Mr.
Robinson with a broad and affectionate
smile, as he polished his huge gold-rimmed
glasses. "The minx sold me fifty pounds of
maple sugar she and Frank Berry have made
at a half cent over price, but I made her
throw in a piece of homespun of a rich but-
ternut that I want for a vest. Nancy is a
born trader and the Lord help this township
if she takes to horses."

"Poor, rough Nancy," Miss Robinson ad-
judged languidly, as she smiled with the in-
tent of enchantment upon Mr. Meriweather,
who was, to saj'^ the least of it, a very desir-
able and lovely personage in his tight snuff-

126

THE MATRIX

colored broadcloth trousers, pigeon-tailed
long coat and much beruffled shirt sur-
mounted by a high black satin stock. And
his beauty was not his only allurement. A
Clinton uncle of great wealth in Philadelphia
had just concluded arrangements for the
first bank in the township and had made
young Clint its president, cashier and clerk.
However, the young combination bank offi-
cial failed to be enchanted and pursued the
subject of Nancy Hanks.

"Breck Kyle says she is a humdinger," he
observed, as he rose from the bench of the
spinnet beside Miss Robinson with pursuit
plainly in his eye.

And at that moment was laid a founda-
tion for trouble from which brave Nancy
was to suffer, even into history.

And the meeting of Nancy Hanks with
Clmton Meriweather was after this manner:

Nancy had dressed early for the candy
pull and ridden into Elizabethtown. She

127

THE MATRIX

had donned the violet dress with the fine
white tucker which lay close and sweet in
just the perfect line around the creamy col-
umn of her round neck, which supported her
stately little head, bound about with fluffy
red-gold braids in the most beautiful pagan
poise, and fell open almost to the arch of
her round breast. The soft fine cotton fab-
ric was cut in long lines which displayed the
fine symmetry of flanks and back and hips
which were as strong and lithe as a man's.
Her slender feet were clad in a pair of the
most shapely slippers ever carried by mules
from the city of Philadelphia, and her slen-
der little ankles were covered by stockings
knitted of the very finest thread ever drawn
from a wheel, with the most intricate pattern
of drop-stitch clocks ever devised by the
mind of woman. And Xancy, though
armed for conquest, was out for business, and
the light that made her big purple eyes glow
back of theii' dark fringe and her full red

128

THE MATRIX

mouth break over her big white teeth with
a smile of delightful satisfaction, was from
the fact that she had just sold Mr. Giles Clai-
bourne another fifty pounds of sugar at a
still higher price than that at which Mr.
Hume had acquired his buckets and with no
homespun to boot. The trade had been
made in front of the Ehzabethtown Tavern,
and Nancy was not at all aware of the part
her gala attire had taken in the deal, but
laid it all entirely to her business acumen.
Mr. Claibourne was the grocery king of the
town as well as the Circuit Judge of the Dis-
trict Court. He was also a widower of
thirty with four small Claibournes on his
heart and mind in a disordered, negi'o-con-
ducted home. Nancy could have sold him
the sugar at any price if she had just recog-
nized the fact.

And while she was smiling over her trade,
she came face to face with Clinton Meri-
weather. They stood facing each other for

129

THE MATRIX

a moment like beautiful wood creatures, then
both faces broke into delighted smiles.

"Nancy Hanks!" exclaimed the young
banker with a sharp intake of his breath
from very astonishment at the beauty of the
girl.

"Is it Clinton Meriweather?" asked
Nancy with cordiality beginning to shine
back of the lashes that curled themselves
up at an angle of delighted inquir5^ "Wel-
come home!" As she spoke she held out her
hand and Mr. Meriweather met a grasp
whose strength surprised him.

"Please forgive me for the circleburs I
put in your hair the last time I saw you,
and the time I made you stump your big
toe by jumping at you around the corner
of Babbitt's store." As he pleaded, Clinton
held Nancy's strong brown hand in his and
turned and began to walk with her towards
her horse, hitched in front of the Court
House.

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THE MATRIX

"When I heard you were coming home I
put up my plats and put on my shoes,"
Nancy laughed, and the color rose on her
cheeks as she found it slightly difficult to
withdraw her hand from that of her old tor-
mentor.

"Yes, you 'd better be — be on guard,"
Clinton answered her with color in his own
cheeks. "I 've come home to stay now and
I 'm going to make it worth your while to — "

"Oh, Clint, I think it is wonderful for
Elizabethtown to have a real bank and I '11
be mighty glad to put my two gourds full
of money in it, but how will you know whose
money is whose? Tell me just how you '11
do it all." Nancy's quick change of mind
from sentiment to business was so genuine
that it carried Clinton Meriweather with her.
There is nothing so exciting to a fledgling
business man as to discuss high finance with
a woman still younger and still more igno-
rant than himself.

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THE MATRIX

When Nancy Hanks rode out to the Hull
candy pulling Clinton Meriweather rode on
her horse behind her, and they still talked
business as her two-year-old Baldy pranced
and shied along in the starlit twilight, jos-
tling soft homespun shoulder against the
brawn under the broadcloth. Nancy Hanks
broke in most of the horses ridden by the
feminine population of Elizabethtown.

The welcome of the candy pullers, for the
banker, was hearty, for all stockade boys
and girls had known each other well in a
barefoot freedom of friendship when In-
dians had threatened. Rosannah Ingram
and Hannah Lytsey pulled his candy with
him with as openly eager coquetry as Miss
Robinson had veiled, and Nancy Sparrow
matched popping corn with him on the
hearth. Great had been the mirth when
the grain named for the guest of honor
popped defiantly away from the one named
for the little Sparrow, The young banker

182

THE MATRIX

picked up his kernel in feigned ruefulness,
but later he handed it to Nancy Hanks with
a significant look from his big blue eyes.
Nancy ate it without looking at him, and
turned to take walnut meats from Sam
Hardstay's plow-calloused hand.

It was no wonder that it was after ten
o'clock and every soft lump of molasses
candy pulled into a yellow plat before Mr.
Meriweather arrived at the Hume residence,
just in time to have ice cream and cake
served to him in paper frills, imported from
Baltimore and France.

"Where 've you been, Clint?" demanded
young Breck Kyle, whose indorsement of
the charms of Nancy Hanks had been re-
sponsible for the bank president's pursuit
thereof.

"Business," answered his friend. "The
Elizabethtown bank has secured its first de-
positor."

"Who, Clinton?" demanded Jean with

1$B

THE MATRIX

cordiality coming back into her cool face
and voice at thus hearing that business was
the cause of her guest's late arrival.

"Nancy Hanks. She had nearly thirty
dollars in two gourds, and they are now
locked up in my safe. Yes, Kyle, she 's a
humdinger."

Seven very highly educated young ladies
exchanged significant glances at this mo-
ment and seven white shoulders above real
lace frills were slightly elevated.

"Poor Nancy," remarked Jean Robinson,
as she turned and began to make a noise of
"Annie Laurie," of which poor Nancy would
have made delicious music.

And to be just, how could a big strapping,
beautiful free woman, who walked among
the men their equal in strength and prowess
and acumen, fail to be a menace to a circle
of fine ladies, who had been taught at great
expense that a woman's place is to sit at
home and sew a seam, fine or coarse, accord-

134

THE MATRIX

ing to her station ? Their httle tea drinkings
would have been dull indeed had they not had
the doings of Nancy to thrill them with
horror.

"I saw Nancy Hanks coming out of the
woods with polk berries in a basket and, my
dear, her dress is at least four inches from
the gi'ound. I could see all of her ankle."

"She had her sleeves rolled to her shoul-
ders at the corn husking the other night, and
husked with the men and beat them. How
coarse!"

"I met her driving a hay wagon out on the
road and I saw a half yard of her leg when
she used the brake. Clinton Meriweather
was with me and I felt so sorry for her,
though she did n't seem to mind and waved
her hat at us."

"I saw her standing in front of the Tav-
ern talking to five men, who were all laugh-
ing at her, and I crossed the street."

"I met her in front of the Court House

135

THE MATRIX

with Clint and Breck and Lee the other day,
and I simply failed to see them. Now Lee
is n't speaking to me."

So it was that Nancy Hanks paid the pen-
alty of being one of the buds on the human
race that flower once in many generations
in any land. The normal man resents the
superman and the feeling is intensified when
the persons in question are of the other sex.
And as the supermen and women are apt to
bud in the class of the genuine toilers, who
do the constructive work of their commun-
ities, the protest of the cultured idlers is apt
to be bitter. The situation has been voiced
in song and story long before the day of
Nancy Hanks, and will be repeated into the
future indefinitely.

136

CHAPTER VII

BY the time she had reached her majority
Nancy Hanks was indeed the foremost
citizen of Elizabethtown, and if she had
been a man she would have undoubtedly been
either Sheriff or Judge. In her own small
group of young folk she was an absolute dic-
tator and she drove them fast and hard.
However, at times she had serious group
troubles, and not the least was with Nancy
Sparrow, her own cousin, who was the thorn
in the flesh of gallant Nancy, and whose es-
capades were often credited to the account
that History was even then keeping on
Nancy Hanks.

"Nancy, honey, I jest don't know what to
do about my Nancy, and that wild Breck
Kyle," her aunt Elizabeth Sparrow said to

137

THE MATRIX

Nancy Hanks, whom she had stopped as she
was riding by the Sparrow home on her way
into Ehzabethtown with a bolt of butternut
jeans and one of bleached cotton sheeting in
her saddle-bags. "She went out with him
last night on a buggy ride and — and it was
'most midnight when she snuck in. I don't
want her daddy to know 'cause they would be
killing shore. And Charlie Friend waiting
to marry her, too."

"What did she say, Aunt Lizzie?" asked
Nancy with determination lighting her pur-
ple eyes, and a firm line straightening the
curves of her red mouth.

"She gave me sass and went on up the lad-
der into her room. Oh, I don't know what
to do, Nancy, for I have my suspicions that
disgrace is coming. Say something to her,
Nancy, she '11 listen to you."

"Suspicion is the kind of thing that breeds
disgrace. Don't you fret, Aunt Lizzie, I '11
attend to Nancy and — Breck Kyle," the

138

THE MATRIX

young dictator answered as she induced Bald
to come down on all four feet and progress
towards the Public Square. As she rode
along there was the lilt of a scarlet tanager
issuing from her throat.

If Napoleon Bonaparte had known of
Nancy Hanks he would have given her a
staff appointment. And when Nancy went
into action she went into quick action.

After she had hitched Bald, the first of
the eternal triangle she met was big clumsy
Charlie Friend, who had cleared ten acres
of land over on the Creek since his sixteenth
year, planted it in cotton as he cleared, and
who was now finishing the building of a two-
room cabin on it. He had the strength of a
Samson but his blood ran as weak as water
when he was in the presence of Nancy Spar-
row, though it also burned red in his huge
ears.

"Howday, Nancy Hanks," he said with a
broad grin as Nancy stopped, lifted the

139

THE MATRIX

bolts of cloth she was carrying from her
head to her hip, and stopped for a parley
with him. Man and boy looked upon Nancy
as a comrade if they looked not with desire.

"Say, Charlie, folks say you are backward
about asking Nancy Sparrow to live in that
fine new cabin. I don't like folks to make
fun of Nancy," as Nancy spoke these words
of untruth and guile, she looked at Charhe,
who had got crimson of ears at the very
mention of the object of his desires, with af-
fectionate respect that put stiffening into his
very marrow.

"You well know that Nancy Sparrow
won't even look at me, Nancy," poor Charhe
faltered.

"She 'd have to look at you if you grabbed
her good and hard and shook her and made
her listen to you." Nancy advised this
course of action well knowing that the most
vigorous pioneer methods of love warfare
had a hundred per cent, chance to succeed.

140

THE MATRIX

"I 'm skeered of her, Nancy," poor
Charlie pleaded.

"Skeer never caught a woman for a man
yet!" Nancy called over her shoulder as she
swung away down the road, being wise
enough to leave seeds to sprout and grow
after she had planted them.

Her method of handling the apex of the
eternal triangle was just as skillful if more
direct. She encountered Breckenridge
Kyle in front of the Elizabethtown Tavern
and bespoke him thus.

"Breck, Nancy Sparrow is going to marry
Charlie Friend Saturday night, and you are
invited to mind your own business. If you
don't I '11 ask Mr. Robinson to put a stop
to your gallivanting. Uncle Tom Sparrow
saved his life from two Injuns and he won't
let one of his clerks bring trouble on Uncle
Tom."

"Whew, Nancy, stop and get your
breath," Breck laughed, but Nancy could

141

THE ]MATRIX

see that her shot had told. Breckenridge's
position in Mr. Robinson's land claim office
was a very ambitious and lucrative one, com-
bining the maximum of returns with the min-
imum of effort. "I 've got to gallivant
somebody because I can't get you," Breck-
enridge dared. "Nan Sparrow looks like
you faded out."

"Sometimes gallivanting backwards draws
a woman. Try that on me, Breck," Xancy
provoked with a laugh that floated up even
to the treetops as she again went on her
way. The flash of her violet eyes over her
shoulder at the tall young gentleman in
small clothes and ruffled shirt was a con-
descending challenge from superior to in-
ferior.

"God, what a girl!" Breckenridge mut-
tered under his breath and did not suspect
that Clinton ^leriweather, standing on the
steps of the Ehzabethtown Tavern near by,
had heard the exclamation, and jealously

142

THE MATRIX

echoed it. Breck was about to disregard her
advice and follow Nancy, but Clinton was
before him.

"Let me carry that cloth for you, Nancy,"
Clinton offered as his stride only slightly
shortened to her step, for Nancy Hanks was
very long and strong limbed and minced
neither steps nor manners.

"Your broadcloth figger ain't suited to
carry homespun, Clint," — Nancy laughed as
she refused to let him share her burden.
"Mine is."

"You look hke a peach blossom in that
pink gown, Nancy," Clinton laughed in an-
swer. "I never saw such a color except in
some Chinee vases at Uncle Clint's in Phil-
adelphia that cost a fortune and a half.
Where did you get it?"

"Carded and spun and wove it, and dyed
it with juice from the polk berries you helped
me gather last fall. I sold three bolts of
it to that Quaker merchant to carry back

143

THE MATRIX

to Philadelphia yesterday. I was just
a-coming to bring the money to you in the
bank, when I had got what's coming from
this from Giles Claibourne."

"You have n't let me go into the woods
with you for three months, Nancy, and when
I go to see you we sit with Mr. Berry and
the family. You don't even come to the
gate with me. Why?" The young banker
put his question with a real hurt in his keen
blue eyes.

"Want the truth, Clint?" Nancy asked,
looking him straight in the eyes, without a
flicker in her purple ones.

"Yes."

"You was kinder getting a habit of hold-
ing hands with me, and honest, Clint, I was
afraid sometime I might get careless and
squeeze back and break a finger bone for
you. If a woman's hand is overstrong a
man's is in danger a-holding of it." And
as she spoke Nancy paused on the threshold

144

THE MATRIX

of Mr. Claibourne's general store and this
time the purple eyes challenged an equal.

"Damn you, Nancy Hanks," Clinton
stormed, enraged at being laughed at and
also at the fact that the very handsome,
young and prosperous proprietor of the store
was hurrying forward to take the bolts of
cloth from Nancy, which he was sure she
would turn over to him. The plum broad-
cloth upon his own slim, straight back was
in this instance to be outshone by the but-
ternut homespun upon the back of Nancy's
avowed suitor, which he had bought straight
off her loom at a fair price and fair only.

"Double same to you, Clint, and good
luck," Nancy answered his oath with a flash
of her white teeth and dimples as she turned
and greeted Mr. Claibourne.

There was nothing for the banker to do
but tip his three-cornered hat ceremoniously
and betake himself to his banking. But the
rage that had risen in his heart had been a

145

THE MATRIX

revealing flame and showed homespun
Nancy enthroned there. He was aghast.
And he was rebellious. Though only
twenty-five years old, Clinton Meriweather's
position in Elizabethtown was a command-
ing one and he had made the Elizabethtown
Bank grow strong and prosperous. His
vigorous, far-seeing mind had great pride of
opinion and he was accustomed to dominate,
with courtesy and charm it is true, every-
body with whom he came in contact. The
men were most of them in his financial
clutches and both feared and liked him.
The girls and young matrons of the social
upiDcr strata of the little city spoiled him
and adored him and he was accustomed to
the most vivid female adulation. No
woman opposed his attentions — except high-
headed Nancy, who flouted him to his face
while drawing him with a charm which
burned in his veins and ate into his very
vitals.

146

THE MATRIX

There was in Nancy Hanks a great depth
and height and breadth of the woman ele-
ment which by nature attracted and fired the
brains of the men with whom she came in
contact, as well as their hearts. They
wanted to talk with her, to argue with her,
and to put an imprint on her mind. She
was as a spark in tow to a man like Meri-
weather, who regarded all women as lesser
human beings. His situation was in a man-
ner desperate. He had set his ambition on
a marriage that would help him build the
house of Meriweather as solidly as he had
built the Elizabethtown Bank, and he had
paid court to a certain very elegant and
wealthy damsel in his Uncle Clinton's aris-
tocratic circle of friends in Philadelphia.
He had visioned her at the head of a polished
mahogany table, loaded with fine nappery,
silver and china, set in the dining-room of
the house about which he was already traf-
ficking with MacGill and Berry. The

147

THE MATRIX

vision was now burned out by the sight of a
girl in a peach-blow homespun with a bur-
den upon her head and a flame of life in her
eyes. He was a stricken man and he was
delirious with his fever.

In the meantime poor handsome Giles
Claibourne was having a brief hour of joy.
Nancy had turned the cloth over to him, and
while he was measuring it and the payment
for it, he was witness to a scene that would
have set any widower's heart to beating.
Three-year-old Gilly Claibourne had caught
sight of Nancy Hanks from behind his
father's counter and the reunion of the two
friends was joyous. Straight into her out-
stretched arms the small boy flung himself,
and her red rose mouth met his budding lips
in the perfect embrace. His head snuggled
down on to her round breast and his arms
held tight as she cradled him a second, and
then flung him aloft far above her head,

148

THE MATRIX

and caught him as he fell squealing back into
the cradle.

"Got peppermints, Nancy?" he demanded
as he muzzled at her suspiciously.

"How '11 you trade?" asked Nancy with a
laugh as she set him down on his feet and
drew a paper parcel from her pocket, thus
putting her youthful lover on the same busi-
ness footing as that On which his father
stood, and also young Banker Meriweather.

"A bushel and a peck of hugs around the
neck," the young peddler answered in a for-
mula she had taught him, and proceeded to
administer his pay at the same time he be-
gan the use of his purchase, which gave
Nancy a sticky dab on her cheek to boot.

"And there she was down on the floor in
the middle of Claibourne's store, hugging his
offspring in a most unseemly manner," was
Miss Killebrew's report to Dame Evelyn
Robinson at a tea drinking the next day.

149

THE MATRIX

"Poor Mr. Claibourne," sighed Mrs. Rob-
inson, with concern for her favorite mer-
chant's danger.

Her sympathy was well placed.

"Oh, Miss Nancy, how can you refuse
us?" the father of Gilly was pleading, even
as he counted the dimes, dollars and pence
into the pink palm, whose life line was dupli-
cated with the sign that palmists say is in
the palms of the mothers of great men.

"I 'd never refuse Gilly anything," Nancy
returned, as she snatched a kiss from the
back of the now sticky three-year-old lover's
neck, and escaped toward the door.

"He '11 be out at Mr. Berry's asking for
a step-mother by tomorrow daylight,"
threatened the young father, as Nancy
stepped out into the sunshine.

"Any man as goes corn-ting for another
is in danger. I '11 kidnap him," Nancy an-
swered the threat as she swung out of sight.
The temperature of Mr. Claibourne's heart

150

THE MATRIX

registered about the same degree as Clinton
IMeriweather's over in the bank, who was
waiting in vain for Nancy to appear to de-
posit in his care the money obtained for the
cloth from his rival.

Nancy had an unusually large number of
fish to fry that day. She went on across
town and turned off the road into a little
path that led to a small cabin in the clear-
ing. An old crone sat by the door, and a
helpless young woman lay on a split-rail bed
in the corner. It was here that Elizabeth-
town's scandal was hiding itself, and Nancy
Hanks was the only woman in town brave
enough to seek its lair.

"How be you, Maggie?" Nancy ques-
tioned as she bent tenderly and laid one of
her fine cool hands on the other girl's hot
suffering eyes.

"My time 's come, Nancy," answered the
woman, who was about to pay alone the
price of a brief love shared with a mule-pack

151

THE MATRIX

merchant, who had gone on his way over the
mountains.

"Not until come dayhght," the old mid-
wife took her pipe out of her mouth to mum-
ble.

"Oh, will you come to help me, Nancy?"
Maggie pleaded wildly.

"I '11 be here. Come, throw a rock at my
window. Granny Betts, if it 's night," Nancy
promised and commanded. "Don't forgit
that no matter what happens you '11 have a
baby, Mag, all your own." The woman
flame in the purple eyes was like a stimulant
to the suffering girl, who caught the spark
of ecstasy.

When the next dawn came Nancy Hanks
let go of the girl's hands she had been hold-
ing, while she went down into the great
shadow from which all women retrieve new
life, and took a wee human bemg into her
strong arms by way of welcome into a big
world.

152

THE MATRIX

It is recorded that the mule-merchant re-
turned, and now a family in Pennsylvania
boasts that "Nancy Hanks officiated at my
grandmother's birth."

At the time, however, gossip in Elizabeth-
town had it that "Nancy Hanks was mixed
up in that ]Maggie Hurt affair."

Oh, big tender Nancy !

On the evening before that birth dawn,
Nancy had finished up the affairs of the tri-
angle most satisfactorily, and she was rest-
ing from her labors with great profundity
before old granny's pebble had been flung
to summon her to the ceremonial of birth.
And beside her reposed Nancy Sparrow,
smiling the soft smile of love's security.
Nancy had taken the young heart of putty
and stamped upon it the crude image of
Charlie Friend with the old but ever potent
strategy.

The two Nancys had met at sundown at
the gate of the home of Mr. Berry.

153

THE MATRIX

"Nancy," said Nancy Hanks, as she
slipped one of her strong arms about the
weak httle cousin's trim waist, "I 'm mighty
glad you are going to have that new cabin
down on the Creek. I wish it was mine. I
love to live here with Uncle and Aunt Berry,
but I want my own cabin so bad that if you
don't take Charlie quick, I '11 set after him.
He 's nigh as good looking as the cabin."

"Where 'd you see him?" asked little
cousin with a swift suspicion darting into her
shallow eyes.

"Oh, I was talkin' with him over in Eliz-
abethtown a while. He says it is all fin-
ished and ready to move into. I asked him
all about it. It 's funny how a new house
makes a woman want a turkey-tail duster
and a man." Nancy spoke with the most
interested unconcern, but did not fail to note
the higher flaming of the suspicion in the
blue eyes questioning hers, the flame almost
crackling.

154.

THE MATRIX

There was no woman in Elizabethtown,
high or lowly, who would n't have been
frightened at the very faintest idea of en-
tering sentimental competition with Nancy
Hanks.

The situation was thus made ripe for huge
Charlie to blunder into, by the light of the
moon, several hours later down at the Spar-
row home.

After a good many minutes of tense si-
lence, which puzzled and frightened him, he
awkwardly floundered into the right path.

"Saw Nancy Hanks down town today.
She 's a mighty sprightly talker."

"What did she talk about?"

"Er — er," Charlie paused, for he knew
it would not do to give an account of the
talk with Nancy, in view of the resolution
he had taken upon himself to accomplish
before the moon went down, if he turned into
a fiery fluid doing it. "She talked mostly
about the — the — cabin."

155

THE MATRIX

His hesitation did the business Nancy
Hanks had negotiated for him.

"Whose cabin?" Nancy Sparrow asked,
with a proprietary note in her voice that was
unmistakable, and which gave Charhe the
courage for the pioneer "gi'ab" prescribed
by Nancy Hanks.

"Yo' cabin and mine," he whispered
fiercely to the back of Nancy's neck, as he
came very near incapacitating her for life
by cracking all of her ribs. Nancy Spar-
row was in radiant spirits as she told Nancy
Hanks all about it, staying at Uncle Berrj'-'s
to sleep ^ath Nancy, so that the confidences
could have a long night session.

"Yes, I think Saturday night will be a
fine time to marrv. After a woman has shot
down a man she oughter tend to him right
away," Nancy the conspirator had consented
with her last waking thought until Granny
Betts threw the pebble hours later.

The name of Breckenridge Kyle had not

156

THE MATRIX

been mentioned between them, and Nancy
Hanks knew that once captured, Charlie
Friend would know how to take care of his
own.

There are abundant records to show that
the life of Nancy Hanks was not an idle one.

157

CHAPTER VIII

\ ND while Nancy Hanks was growing
^ -^ with the growth of the httle border
town, what had become of Thomas Lincoln
back in the Httle wilderness settlement in
which she had left him? How were these
children of destiny to be drawn together
again ?

"Did you see Tom, and when is he com-
ing?" was the question which Nancy put to
Elder Jesse Head each time he passed
through Elizabethtown on his circuit rid-
ing during all the years that passed between
her and the beloved Thomas.

"Tom 's living and will be dying just in
the same tracks you left him in, Nancy," the
Elder would answer with a delighted twinkle
in his shrewd old eyes as he beheld the growth

158

THE MATRIX

in beauty and wisdom his young favorite had
made. "He always says, 'Tell me 'bout
Nancy.' And after I get through telling
and urge upon him the thought of coming
with me and beholding he retires ten miles
in the forest at the very thought of facing
you. Tom '11 die a tongue-tied bachelor un-
less some woman uses force on him."

"No woman had better use force on Tom
Lincoln," Nancy Hanks had flared back
with her violet eyes in reply.

"Well, since Sallie Bush married Dan
Johnson and moved over here, I reckon Tom
is in no danger. Ever see Sallie?"

"I washed and dressed a ten-pound baby
for her last week," laughed Nancy.

"Then you forgave her for slighting Tom
at love feast ten years ago?"

"No, but a woman can't hold a grudge
against a ten-pound man baby, can she?"
Nancy answered.

"The good Lord fashions some women's

159

THE MATRIX

breasts and arms for cradle service to the
offspring of other women as well as her
own, Nancy, and you seem to be one. I
want to commend you f er standing by Mag-
gie.

"Wait until I get that mule-packer and
make a daddy outen him for Maggie's baby,
then commend me, Elder," Nancy answered.
"Will you tell Tom Lincoln I say to be
a-coming over here as he promised me ten
years ago?"

"Yes, I '11 tell him and God bless vou,
child, for a faithful and friendly heart," the
Elder answered as he and Nancy parted at
the door of the Elizabethtown Tavern.

The ten years Tom Lincoln and Jo Hanks
had lived in the parentless Hanks cabin
home had passed without anything more
eventful than life and death and cold and
heat and hunger and love. William Hanks
had moved away with a mate and left the
two boys alone, under the eye of ^Nlordecai

160

THE MATRIX

Lincoln and stern Susan, who had been
somewhat softened toward life in general
and Tom in particular, when he had made a
tiny coffin for her baby, who had never
breathed and in his own arms had shown it
to her and borne it out to the edge of the
clearing and buried it where she could look
after the grave herself. Big Mordecai had
not the skill to fashion so tiny and lovely a
thing as Tom had made of the little cedar
box. Nobody could then gauge the huge
reservoir of tenderness that lay under the
nature of the great, uncouth young man's
heart, but a hundred years later men under-
stood him better.

The bachelor establishment of Tom and
Jo was cared for by the Runt, to whom Tom
paid a wage of two bits a week, which he con-
sidered ample to define their relation as em-
ployer and employee, rather than that of
master and slave. No papers up to that
time had ever been made out concerning the

161

THE MATRIX

freedom of the Runt, and the incident of the
stove-wood, the Sallie Bush singing book
and the love feast were forgotten by all con-
cerned, except that the heart of Tom Lin-
coln had freed his slave and was clean and
at rest on the subject.

And the years had brought very little in
the way of worldly goods to Tom Lincohi.
For his work he was poorly paid and as he
never made any point of enforcing his claims
much of the time he was not paid at all.
Mordecai Lincoln had considered his elder
son's claim to all the Lincoln property,
landed and personal, as beyond dispute, and
Tom was not the person to contest a claim.
He never even gave a thought to his rights to
patrimony but did the work in hand, and
haunted his beloved forests, dreaming great
dreams we must believe, from his final re-
sults. The dreams of a man slow of growth,
silent and tender, are apt to be potent. He
was nearly thirty years old, nearing the age

162

THE MATRIX

at which the great-hearted Carpenter i^ut
aside His tools and went forth to save man-
kind, when His call came.

What Thomas took to be a call of need
from Nancy Hanks, made him take his tools
under his arms and go out in Nancy's world
to answer, with Runt the shadow folowing
him. And he found her at a crossing of
roads.

No matter how a woman may claim, de-
clare and affirm her freedom, there are
snares set for her at the meeting of many
paths, and it is impossible for her to keep
out of them all. The keen brain of Clinton
Meriweather, banker, was at work on the
mechanism of a trap for Nancy Hanks, and
when it was finished he was himself caught.

For many days after, the revelation of
Nancy securely lodged in his heart, he shut
the door of that organ and went about his
business, determined to empty the shrine by
ignoring it. He found that impossible, for

163

THE MATRIX

the more his thoughts ignored Xancy and
engrossed themselves in the reckonings of
barter and sale, the more his heart thirsted
for her. The night of the full moon in
April was his undoing.

Nancy had been do^vn to see Charlie
Friend and the infatuated wife she had
helped him obtain, and had started home
long enough before sundown to have reached
there before moon-up, but the budding
spring woods were too much for Nancy
Hanks and she began to loiter and love the
curling, budding, unspringing, blushing,
perfuming spring all around her. She
greeted the little white violets with rapture,
she stepped carefulty to keep from break-
ing the tall white Indian pipes, and she
gathered the bronze trillium into a huge
bunch for drying for one of her medicinal
mixtures, which she slung over her shoulder
on a stout hickory stick she had picked up for
a whip stock. Just as she was on the edge

164'

THE MATRIX

of the clearing she stopped to listen, en-
tranced to a mocking bird courtship, in
which the feathered suitor was risking burst-
ing his little heart to gain an answering
cheep from a white blossoming dogswood
bough just below the pink-budded maple
limb on which he tilted and sang. The
Snal red gold rays of the sun were being
sifted out of the first beams of the full moon
and the opal glow wrapped Nancy around
like the veil of a bride. When she turned
from the last operatic flight of the small
feathered lover, she turned into the arms of
Clinton Meriweather, which closed on her
hungrily.

"Nancy, Nancy Hanks," he murmured, as
he pressed her lithe, strong body to his and
tried to find her lips with his own. And the
riot of youth in his veins called to the youth
in hers as she yielded to his pressure and
raised her face to his hunting. What
Nancy Hanks saw in the eyes of Clinton

165

THE MATRIX

Meriweather made her draw away from him
and lay her hand on his breast to hold him
back from her.

"Don't, Chnt, don't," she commanded,
trying to draw completely out of his arms.

But she was trying to stay a flood with a
woman's words, and his response to her sharp
command, in which there was also appeal,
was to force down her arm with his left,
while his right was sweeping her to him.
What the polished man of the world in-
tended to do to the homespun woman no-
body ever knew but himself, for the stout
hickory stick cut a gash across his blond
head and felled him like a slaughtered ox.
Nancy Hanks could defend herself.

It just happened that Dan Mitchell and
Sam Hardy were coming out of the wood
with sacks of sassafras roots for the cattle
on their backs, and to Nancy's call their re-
sponse was swift,

"Ruffled hound! Hope you killed him,"

166

THE MATRIX

said Dan, as he put his cowhide boot in un-
der the broadcloth-covered side of the pros-
trated gentleman and turned him on his
back.

"Oh, no, Dan!" exclaimed Nancy, as she
fell on her knees beside her prostrate suitor,
her anger spent by the blow, and anxiety
rising in its stead.

"He did n't do you a harm, did he,
Nancy?" asked Dan in a quiet voice, but
with the intent to kill in his eyes, as he de-
manded the truth from his foster sister.

"No, Dan, no," Nancy answered, as she
looked him full in the face,

"Well, then he can live if he can," Dan
decreed, as he stooped down to see just
what damage she had done. "That knock
is no more than he deserved and maybe it
will let some sense into his gallivanting
head. Put down your pack, Sam, and let 's
carry him to the Ehzabethtown Tavern,
where he belongs." With which both men

167

THE MATRIX

deposited their burdens of sassafras and
lifted a new and bloody one.

"You go on home, Nancy, and nobody
won't know the difference," Dan com-
manded, with more eve to the conventions
than Nancy, who had lifted the bleeding
head on her arm as the two men started to
go with their burden.

"And let him bleed to death? Xo!" an-
swered Nancy as the little procession started,
which by the time it had reached its des-
tination, had started a scandal in Elizabeth-
town which smoulders to this day.

"He was forcing Nancy and she hit him,"
was the answer given by crude Dan right
and left to the questioning crowd that fol-
lowed them. Even at that trying moment
the head of Nancy Hanks was not lowered
a fraction of an inch, and she was more oc-
cupied with staunching the flow of blood,
which dyed crimson the breast and front and
sleeve of her homespun dress, than with pub-

168

THE MATRIX

lie opinion, then in the forming against her.
Though to be accurate, most of the ques-
tioners turned from the injured banker
with the angry and unsympathetic remark :
"Served him right, Nancy Hanks!"
And Nancy's conduct through the whole
affair was entirely true to her character as
a child of nature. When the procession
reached the Elizabethtown Tavern, upon
whose ground and only floor were situated
the two large bachelor rooms of the banker,
Nancy called for linen, turpentine and hot
water, and proceeded to bathe and cleanse
the wound she had administered, while peo-
ple were looking right and left for old Dr.
Cummins, who was as that moment up over
the Means Feed and Harness Shop, deep in
a game with a jug of Jamaica rum and ob-
livious to the spectacular need of his serv-
ices.

After Nancy had succeeded in drawing
the gap together with a long needle, which

169

THE MATRIX

she had bent and heated in a flame, she was
proceeding to bathe the gore from the pal-
lid face, when the famous scene with Dame
Evelyn Robinson ensued of which the fol-
lowing is a well constructed account.

The very much flustered and bewildered
matron arrived at the door in high color and
great indignation at the details which had
been carried to her of the outrage upon this
bachelor member of her circle of friends.
Duly escorted by her husband, she had has-
tened to the scene as soon as she had ac-
quired his suitable escort and accomplished
a suitable toilet, during which time her pros-
trated friend might have bled to death, if
the woman in the case had regarded the
questions of convention or costume.

"Stand aside, girl, and allow Mr. Meri-
weather's friends access to him," she com-
manded, as she fairly swept her draperies
close to her as if to keep them from defile-
ment.

170

THE MATRIX

"Come, keep the hot towel to the wound,
while I get the blood offen him," Nancy an-
swered, so intent upon her ministrations that
she failed to notice the belligerency directed
against her. As she spoke, she moved aside
so that Dame Robinson could get a full view
of the bloody man, the bloody pillow and her
own bloody dress, for upon the white cotton
of her homespun the gore was doubly ter-
rible.

Dame Robinson, true to form, quietly and
artistically swooned.

"And Evelyn Robinson's own ma shot a
catamount that was making off with a
chicken and skun 'him 'fore her man got
home," old Mr. Beckett, the keeper of the
Elizabethtown Tavern, muttered to himself
sadly, after he had helped the abashed hus-
band cart the useless woman away in her
carriage with its high stepping bays.

It was after midnight before Nancy
Hanks had been willing to leave her patient

171

THE MATRIX

with Granny Betts, who had come with bas-
ket and snuff stick to be installed as watcher
nurse, and by six o'clock the next morning
she was back to see to her bandaging, for she
was accustomed to look after the odds and
ends of surgery for Doctor Cummins dur-
ing his frequent rum sieges. That day the
whole of Elizabethtown whirled and raged
with scandal, and probably brave Nancy,
fighting with all her skill to keep down the
fever of the patient, and keep the wound in
a condition for healing, was the only inhabi-
tant who was calm about the matter.

The sick room would have been overrun
to the patient's great hurt if Xancy had not
made a plea for him to th€ grim old tavern
keeper.

"Just keep folks away until the fever goes
and it begins to heal, and he gets his senses,"
she begged.

"I'll do that thing," old Eph Beckett
promised and that promise he grimly kept.

172

THE MATRIX

And while Nancy fought for the very hfe
of the man she had prostrated, his near and
dear friends lacerated and bruised her rep-
utation until it was as black and blue as the
area of his wound. Those with a sense of
humor, laughed over the account of Dame
Robinson's assault and swoon, and the
knowledge that this was so added fuel to her
flames of anger. She preened herself and
bided her time.

It came the first day upon which the pa-
tient found himself able to be raised on a
pillow and take broth from a bowl held by
Nancy. His eyes had been following her
for several days, but she had hushed him with
authority whenever he had tried to speak.
Today his strength was enough to assert
itself.

"I have something to say to you, Nancy,"
he said, as he laid his bandaged head back
on the pillow with only a fraction of the
care he had been using in so disposing it,

173

THE MATRIX

which betokened its satisfactory degree of
healing.

"Ask Granny Betts for it," Nancy an-
swered him quickly, and as she spoke she
picked up a bundle over by the door and
walked out of the room in the most casual
manner, and not with the air of shaking the
dust from her feet.

It was in the fret of this betrayal that
Dame Robinson found the banker an hour
later, and it is to the credit of his self-con-
trol that he kept calm and let her babble on
until he had extracted the entire situation
from her.

"Of course as none of us were your im-
mediate family, it was impossible for us to
force this girl to leave your rooms, Clinton,"
she was rounding out her tale by saying.

"Especially as none of my friends were
quite qualified to take her place," he added
in the gentlest of voices. "Located where

174

THE MATRIX

it was, the wound was rather dangerous, with
Cummins in delirium tremens."

"Well, since she struck you while you
were — " here Mrs. Robinson paused in a
veritable panic as she had apparently put
her foot into her own words.

"While I was asking her to marry me.
She was refusing me with vigor," Clinton
Meriweather, banker, remarked quietly with
his keen and very beautiful blue eyes hold-
ing those of Dame Robinson's sternly.
The banker was proving himself a gallant
gentleman when under test.

"Mar — ry you?" Dame Robinson fairly
gasped.

"When I get her answer, I '11 tell my
friends, favorable or unfavorable," the
banker continued. "I '11 surely tell you and
Mr. Robinson among the first for my close
association in business with him makes me
sure of his sympathy, whichever way my

175

THE MATRIX

luck runs." Banker Meriweather knew
that Dame Robinson knew that the Eliza-
bethtown Bank was financing her husband's
largest cotton deal for the season, and he
used that knowledge adroitly.

Dame Robinson in her velour silk and
lace fled the situation and left it to Granny
Betts.

When Nancy failed to return to her pa-
tient for twenty-four hours, he fretted him-
self into a fever and granny had to appeal
to her. She came fluttering back to her
nursling on swift wings.

Nancy Hanks had drawn back from the
fierce arms of passion, but she was utterly in-
capable of drawing away from weak upheld
arms of adoration, and she soothed the pale
scarred head against her fragrant pink
cheek.

"I 'm sorry, Nancy."

"I 'm sorry, too."

They were young and it was May day.

176

THE MATRIX

"Will you marry me, Nancy?"

There was no affirmative bond given to
that question by Nancy Hanks, only the
tenderness that it was her nature to give to
weakness. Then she fled the sick room,
never to return.

Through the mediums of the tongues of
Granny Betts, who had been present at the
entire interview, and Dame Evelyn Robin-
son, it became known that Nancy Hanks had
been "asked" by Banker Clinton Meri-
weather and that his fate was still in the
balance of her shapely hands. The next
ten days were the most exciting that Eliza-
bethtown had experienced since the last In-
dian raid and the strife was civil warfare.
All the homespun gentry guffawed over the
fact that Nancy had "lammed" the young
plutocrat, but they liked him and in the main
were for him and his suit, now that they un-
derstood it to be a legitimate one.

"Larruping a husband proper before she

177

THE MATRIX

gets him is a mighty good way for a woman
to start housekeeping," Mr. Sid Sanders,
the stage driver to and from Louisville, re-
marked. "Now you 've done put your
mark on the banker you better marry him,
Nancy."

"Marrying is putting a string around a
woman's wrists that keeps her from larrup-
ing a husband after she gets him, Uncle Sid,"
answered Nancy with a laugh.

"Yaas, but the bonds of matrimony is
mostly made of apron strings," was Uncle
Sid's retort as he started on his journey.

178

CHAPTER IX

AND while the friends of Nancy laughed
over her escapade and kept up a run-
ning fire of curiosity as to what her final
answer to her most spectacular wooing was
to be, the broadcloth circle in which Clinton
Meriweather had his social being waxed in-
dignant but prudent. A few words from
the masculine heads of the families involved
in various banking schemes as to the advis-
ability of "waiting to see which way the cat
jumped," in the matter of the banker's fate,
kept the feminine riot at the point of smoul-
dering. And women are not at all behind
men in worldh'' judgment, and the future
mistress of the handsomest house ever built
in the township, whose second story was be-
ing laid in purple brick from the energetic

179

THE MATRIX

MacGill and Berry firm, would have to be
reckoned with.

"After all the girl is very beautiful and
men will be men," sighed Dame Evelyn Rob-
inson as she looked contentedly at young
Jean, over whose head drooped that of the
rescued Breckenridge Kyle, as they sat to-
gether before the spinnet at the other end
of the long parlor.

'T 'm glad he '11 get on his feet and out
tomorrow, so as to hunt her down," chuc-
kled Mr. Gideon Robinson. "I bet Tom
Sparrow a hogshead of tobacco she flouts
him after all."

And the wager on the subject between
Mr. Robinson and Tom Sparrow was not
the only one laid in Ehzabethtown as to
whether or not Xancy Hanks would marry
the banker she had assaulted. By Satur-
day afternoon, ^Mav fifteenth, the tension
had become like unto that out at the trotting
track, which had been laid down, two years

180

THE MATRIX

before, where roan two-year-olds could race
bays of like years.

And it was upon that date that the young
banker got into his small clothes and upon
his feet again. Looking very pale and in-
terest-inspiring, with the scar across his tem-
ple, he stood taking the air upon the steps
of the Elizabethtown Tavern, and also tak-
ing the congratulations of his friends, mas-
culine and feminine, who began to congre-
gate around him. Dame Evelyn stood be-
side him, while Jean and Breckenridge had
paused to greet him and chaff with Milly
Hume, Buford Clark and several more
young bloods with elaborately dimity-clad
girls on their arms. And if the world of
fashion was well represented on the Square,
so also was the world of homespun. Aunt
Lucy Berry and Aunt Elizabeth Sparrow
were down with Mrs. Sam Hardstay, trad-
ing at the Clairbourne store, and Mrs. Lytsie
and Mrs. Hull were on the same errand,

181

THE MATRIX

having their daughters with them. In fact
representative Elizabethtown was congre-
gated when Xancy Hanks and ]Mrs. Charhe
Friend turned into the Square at the corner
on which the Ehzabethtown Tavern stood,
thus reaching the very center of the stage
before thev knew thev had made their en-
trance.

When Xancy Hanks suddenly looked up
to see Clinton ]Meriweather, with her and his
world as a background, gazing down at her
wnth his heart in his handsome eves, the mo-
ment was, to sav the least, dramatic.

For a long moment they stood taking each
other's measure, and w^ho shall sav what the
result of their regard would have been, if
Thomas Lincoln had n't walked from out
the forest, around the corner and stopped
ten paces from Xancy, his eyes on her face
and the rest of the world outside of the range
of his consciousness.

Even in the group of large pioneer men

182

THE MATRIX

he loomed tall and broad. His deerskin
trousers were stuffed into rawhide boots and
girted in the one white shirt he had ever
possessed, which Nancy had made for him,
and which had been a cherished treasure.
It was open away from his brawny throat
as usual, and upon the shock of black hair,
stiff from a ten years' lack of greasing, was
a coonskin cap, from which dangled behind
the long bushy tail of the animal. In the
hollow of one arm rested his rifle and his
other balanced his bundle of carpenter's
tools, wrapped in his leathern apron, on his
broad shoulder. On his square- jawed, clean-
cut face there was the quiet of the wilder-
ness, until his dark eyes focused themselves
on Nancy, as she stood poised towards him
with a flame of delight in her black-rimmed
purple eyes.

"Nancy," he said as a great, hungry smile
spread all over his somber, still face.
"Nancy, Nancy!"

183

THE MATRIX

"Tom, oh, Tom," was Nancy's answer
with the lilt of the mocking bird in her white
throat, as she flew to him and clung to his
arm and the old gun.

With that cr}^ Clinton Meri weather was
answered, only at the moment nobody knew
it. They might have surmised it by the way
all thought of the banker, whom she had
been just about to greet in the sight of the
populace, passed from her consciousness as
she drew the burly woodsman, the like of
whom Elizabethtown had not seen in five
years, across the street to the front of the
Claibourne store, where her aunts stood.
These relatives had noted the whole scene
and their greeting to the intruder was not
overly cordial.

In the meantime Clinton Meriweather's
world had closed around him, hopeful that
the crisis was passed, and flocked into the
tavern to drink tea with him.

184

THE MATRIX

"Wlien '11 I send for the tobacco, Brother
Sparrow?" questioned Mr. Robinson, as he
and Sparrow were watering runi together at
the tavern bar out of sight of the tea party.

"Oh, shoo, Nancy was jest upsot by the
crowd and seeing Tom, who was a brother
to her 'fore her folks died. Give a man a
courting chanst, can't you?" Thus Tom
Sparrow put off the banker.

There were more events crowded into the
first hours of Thomas Lincoln's residence in
Ehzabethtown than had transpired in all of
his twenty-eight years put together, or so it
seemed to him, and through it all he was
actively conscious only of Nancy Hanks.

"Well, well, Thomas, how you have
grown," remarked Uncle Berry, as he pushed
his chair back from the supper table and took
out the gold snuff box and refreshed himself,
brushing a fleck from a fine ruffle Nancy had
put upon his shirt front as a badge of his ex-

185

THE MATRIX

panding prosperity. "And you 're wel-
come, my boy, mighty welcome, as you may
have guessed from Nancy's face."

"Nancy 's growed too," was Thomas' bril-
liant remark, as he smiled a smile as full of
pride over Nancy's beauty as if he had pro-
duced it, though in fact his arrival had added
to it no little.

"Young men had better walk respectful
before Nancy, for she has got a powerful
grip on a hickory stick and — " Mr. Berry
was saying to Nancy's vast confusion, when
Ned Berry cut into the conversation with
practical intent.

"Say, Tom, I can put you to work to-
morrow on the Meriweather house at a good
wage," he said eagerly. "We 're mightily
in need of the fancy work you and Jo was
learning when I was over to Lincoln Set-
tlement last year."

"It '11 be a fitting thing for Tom to get
here in time to put a lick or two on Nancy's

186

THE MATRIX

house," remarked Uncle Tom Sparrow, who
had come to greet his nephew, thus trying
cannily to get a statement of intentions from
Nancy, by which he could settle his wager.

Nancy's answer was to rise to her feet
without a glance in his direction.

"Let 's go out in the woods before it is
plmn dark, Tom," she said. "I suspect
Piedy of a new calf and I want to find her
and house her tonight. The calf might be
weak and make bear bait."

"Don't think she 's got any notion of flout-
ing Meriweather, do you. Brother Berry,
drat the girl? " Tom Sparrow inquired anx-
iously after Tom and Nancy had gone.

"I consider speculating on courting con-
niptions a waste of time. Brother Sparrow,"
Mr. Berry answered sagely.

"Maybe Tom Lincoln will put a spoke in
that wheel," spoke up Aunt Lucy from the
head of the table, upon which she was rest-
ing her elbows before beginning to clear up

187

THE MATRIX

the debris. There has not been invented
any better detecter of love's vagaries than a
woman's intuition.

"Shoo, Nancv would n't look al a shift-
less fellow like Tom, with no more than a
shirt to his back," laughed Mr. Sparrow.
"I reckon my tobacco is safe."

Fifteen nights had the old moon, who had
looked down upon the wooings of count-
less generations of man and woman kind,
risen over the tree-tops in the forest sur-
rounding Elizabethtown since Clinton
Meriweather had met Xancy Hanks under
the budding boughs of early May and at-
tempted to seize her in rough hadns. Later,
each night, had it shone down upon the flow-
ering and sprouting and now it only glanced
in toward morning, lea^Tiig the early watch
to the mass of stars, which seemed to Tom
and Nanc)'- to swarm just above the tree-
tops as they walked out under them in the
fading twilight. The search for the calf

188

THE MATRIX

was forgotten and they sat side by side upon
the trunk of a tree Ned had felled the week
before, to use in timbering the fine Meri-
weather house, being built for Nancy.

Tom's face was lifted to the stars and
Nancy could see that his lips were moving
in the dusk and his face was solemn and still.

"What made you come at last, Tom?" she
asked, and there was the wooing note in her
throat that had been in the cheep which had
answered the mocking bird lover's demand.

"Word came to me, Nancy, by a trader,
that a man had tried to force you, and I
greased my gun and come to kill him," was
the quiet answer in Tom's deep voice.
"I 'm just saying thanky to God I find you
safe, honey bird." There was the croon in
his voice which had stilled Nancy's five-year-
old fears, and now it fell into her heart like
the echo of one of its own throbs, which were
rocking her round breasts high and low.

"He did n't do nothing to me, Tom, I just

189

THE MATRIX

did n't — did n't want him," Nancy said after
a minute's stillness.

Then they turned to each other, moved by
one motif — Nancy was crushed in Thomas
Lincoln's strong arms and he cradled her
on his breast with a tenderness she had long
known, and for which she now knew her
woman's soul had waited. Her heart beat
on his with the great, slow, strong pulses of
perfect mating, and her red lips drank in
his love like a chalice takes a sacred wine of
life.

"Oh, Nancy, I ain't fittin' for you," was
his first cry after the fusion.

"Nobody but you, Tom, never," was her
steadfast answer, as she drew his cheek down
and pressed it against her breast.

"Nobody but you, Nancy," he ratified.

"Don't you never cut and grease your
hair, since I left you, Tom?" she laughed as
she sobbed, looking down into the solemn
gray eyes raised to hers, thus breaking a ten-

190

THE MATRIX

sion which the watchful stars must have felt,
so potent was it to become in the destiny of
one of their kindred worlds.

His answer was the first audible laugh
that Thomas Lincoln had ever given forth
as he raised his head from her breast, and
again took her into her old, accustomed
cradle of his arms.

"Sure you '11 be able to trim me up into a
husband, Nancy?" he asked.

"I am sure," answered Nancy with entire
confidence, as she ran her capable hand over
the beloved black shock. "Saturday week
will be June 12th, and that will do," she de-
cided, after rapidly counting her days.

Tom's answer was his cheek laid gently
against hers.

"Now let 's talk," Nancy said, with a
thirst in her voice as if she had for many
years been silent.

Late into the fragrant night hours they
questioned and answered, and all marauders

191

THE MATRIX

were turned aside from their communion.
The crickets and the katydids and the tree
toads muted their burr to a mere chorus to
the soft duet of their happy voices. The
nesting birds above their heads chirped a
sleepy commendation to the human nest-
planning going on belovr them, and fluffed
drowsy wings above the young lives they
were hovering.

"Charlie and Ned will help raise us a
cabin dow^n on the creek, near Charlie's, in a
few days. You can make the furniture lit-
tle by little," Nancy planned with her slim
fingers molded into his huge hand by a
pressure which would have hurt a fine lady,
but which the strength in her own gave back
in equal measure.

"I 've got the money to buy a bit of land.
Here it is, honey bird," Tom agreed, and he
reached down in each boot and drew out two
pouches made of moleskin and heavy with

19?

THE MATRIX

coin and script, thus with all his worldly-
goods endowing Nancy before the ceremony
which it is usual to have accompany such a
bestowal.

"I 've got some money too, and we '11 buy
it together," Nancy said, as she laid the for-
tune on the stump beside her.

"I can't believe it is true," poor Thomas
suddenly faltered, as he di*ew Nancy into his
arms again. "I 've been so lonesome all my
life, Nancy, with you lost to me, I ain't
much but I 've never harmed nobody," and
with his cheek pressed to the soft haven she
had shown him poor inarticulate, unlettered
Thomas Lincoln poured into the heart of
his mate all the pent-up himiiliations, dis-
couragements, longings, strivings and ambi-
tions that had filled his silent self-contained
life.

"If I had n't learned to pray to God,
Nancy, I could n't have stood it, but Elder

193

THE MATRIX

Head helped me to that," he said at last, as
he rested content against her shoulder with
her hand stroking his hair.

"I wish Elder Head was a Presbyterian
instead of a Methodist," Nancy said.
"Both of them just sprinkles, and what's
the difference?"

"Presbyterians declare against slavery
and I 've got to hold with 'em," Tom said as
he sat up and threw back his head hke a
war horse scenting the fray.

"Of course we '11 hold with them that ev-
erybody ought to go free," Xancy assented,
as she rose to her feet and took Tom's for-
tune from the tree trunk beside her. "But
let's get Elder Head to marry us, as there
ain't no Presbyterian preacher in town now.
I '11 be glad to have him."

"Keep talking that word 'many,' Nancy,
so as I '11 get it in my head before I have
to let you go away from me in the house,"
Tom said as he and Nancy walked hand and

194

THE MATRIX

hand away from the place of their betrothal,
which had been out in God's open as had the
betrothal of the first man and the first
woman.

And hand and hand they went into the
clearing and to the back door of the Berry
home, which was dark and hovering deep
sleep. Tom was about to take Nancy into a
good-night embrace, when a shadow fell be-
tween them.

The Runt rose from the doorstep and
flung himself with a laughing sob down in
the dust at Nancy's feet and buried his
woolly head in her skirts as his long arms
embraced her knees.

"Howdy, Miss Nancy, howdy," he gur-
gled in the depths of emotional joy, which
is the characteristic of his race.

"Why, Runt, where did you come from?"
Nancy cried with welcome in her voice, as
she patted the woolly head and then pushed
Runt back on his flat heels.

195

THE MATRIX

"I come with Marse Tom. We shot a
deer and toting it made me behind him on
the road."

"I told you to call me Mister Tom and
not Marse Tom, Rmit," said Tom sternly.
"Somebody '11 be thinking you belong to

me."

"Yessir," answered the Runt meeklv.
"But lessen somebody makes me I ain't

ft'

a-going to say I 'se a free nigger."

"Well, go and get in the hay in the barn,"
Nancy commanded quickly, thus stopping
an argument which had gone on for twelve
years. With a chuckle the Runt obeyed,
having for once said the last word on the
sore subject.

The old moon got around in time to see
Thomas Lincoln for a last time take Nancy
Hanks in his strong arms and dismiss her
into the silent house with an embrace whose
force was ordained to produce power, as
surely as were the great coordinated parts of

196

THE MATRIX

the driving machine in the steamboat Robert
Fulton had just launched for the first time
on the Hudson River at about that date.

'197)

CHAPTER X

THEf ten days before their marriage sped
by Thomas and Nancy so fleetly that
they could hardly count them. If her fam-
ily and friends disapproved of her marriage,
they failed to say so, and the whole Eliza-
bethtown "wished Nancy well," though pre-
dicting that she was "throwing herself
away," having "gone through the woods and
picked up a crooked stick." As she had
predicted, Charlie Friend and Ned Berry
were glad to help Tom raise a big one-room
cabin, almost the exact counterpart of the
one into which he had carried Nancy on her
arrival from Virginia into the Wilderness,
and the last three days before the solemn
event he had free for making a few neces-

198

THE MATRIX

sary pieces of furniture. Thursdaj^ after-
noon he spent setting the strong post upon
which he was going to nail the split rails to
hold the cords for the swinging of the feather
bed, w^hich the aunts Lucy and Lizzie were
industriously stuffing into a tick Nancy had
woven, even while she was saving the down
of wild fowl, thus making the bed she was to
lie in. While he was at work Nancy came
in the door, flung herself into his arms and
began to cry with her cheek pressed to his
hairy breast, from which as usual the hickory
shirt fell away.

"Hush-e, hush-e," he crooned, with the old
quieting charm. He did n't ask the cause of
the outburst, he just cradled and hummed.
Tom Lincoln always used words as a last re-
sort.

"I had to go to Clinton Meriweather's
bank for the money to pay for the land,"
she sobbed.

"Didn't he speak you fair?" demanded

199

THE MATRIX

Tom, as the muscles in his tender arms tight-
ened.

"Yes, and he 's going to Philadelphia to-
night," Nancy said, controlling her sobs but
with her arms creeping up around Tom's
neck. "He thinks I was n't square with
him."

"Well, thinking don't hurt nobody," Tom
soothed, as he put her from him gently and
went on nailing the rails for their nuptial
couch. "Maybe it '11 help you to put a little
elbow grease in the way of polishing on that
table I split out for you this morning over
there in the corner. Do you want to sleep
with your head east or north?"

"North," answered Nancy with the color
rising up to the very edge of her purple
eyes. Tom laughed and kissed her, thus
restoring her equihbrium, but sealing up
within her the hurt of her interview with
Clinton Meriweather.

And the ordeal had been a hard one.

200

THE MATRIX

Nancy had hoped to find other chents in
the bank, but Clinton was alone when she
entered, and immediately came over to the
railing that separated his safe and desk
from the rest of the room, and stood beside
her. It was the first time they had faced
each other since the long moment when
Thomas Lincoln had stepped between them
and at the sight of her, with the love lustre
upon her face and body, had risen in the
heart of the shrewd man of the world an
overwhelming desire to battle for what he
wanted. And in his passion he was a for-
midable adversary.

"Do you fully realize what you are doing
in marrying this Lincoln, Nancy?" he asked
with only quiet and gentleness in his cul-
tured voice.

"Yes," answered Nancy with a proud up-
lifting of her beautiful head.

"I don't believe you do and I want you
to let me put it to you plainly. I ask it be-

201

THE MATRIX

cause — because I think my love for you
gives me the right."

The demand appealed to Nancy's sense of
both justice and generosity.

"Yes," she answered again with tears deep
in her eyes for what she could not help but
see the strong man w^as suffering.

"In your twenty-third year you are mar-
rying a man 3"our inferior in every way, who
is too old for you to raise to your own stand-
ard. He can neither read nor write, and it
is not likely that he w411 be able to take care
of j^ou. I have offered you everything to
make a woman's life complete. I ask you
to stop and think, before it is too late."

Could a woman have been more fullv
tempted?

"I love him," Nancv answered with a
flame in her eyes which is a race signal which
must be obeyed if great results are to be
obtained. "I thank you, Clint, but I love
Tom Lincoln."

202

THE MATRIX

"Then that 's all, Nancy," answered the
banker as his keen mind signaled his hot and
ravished heart the uselessness of protest.
"I 'm going to Philadelphia by tonight's
stage and Mr. Robinson will attend to the
banking until I get back. Your account is
all in order. I hope you are going to be
happy. If you are not — " a grim line came
around his mouth and a spark struck out
of his eyes, which he quickly veiled.
"Good-by."

The grimness in his powerful face and
voice frightened Nancy, and sent her flying
to Tom. What was it in the gentle, rough,
strong frontiersman which made destiny se-
lect him to mate with Nancy Hanks instead
of one of the most intellectual and powerful
men west of the Alleghanies? Is it that
real race power is drawn from the hearts
of the blessed "meek, who shall inherit the
earth"? Twice at least we know that the
Lord has chosen the sons of carpenters to

203

THE MATRIX

die to make men free ; the sons of Joseph of
Nazareth and Thomas Lincoln.

The few days before the wedding of
Thomas and Xancy were so crowded with
worldly events that they had not a moment
for love's commmiion, and the maid kept the
man's head in such a whirl that he was more
stupid and awkward than usual. He fin-
ished all necessary furniture and on his broad
shoulders he transported bundle and box and
basket and jug and bucket and kettle
through the forest that lay between the
Berrv home and the new Lincoln cabin, un-
til he had trampled and kicked in the under-
gro^\i:h a well-defined path from door to
door. And each journey the Runt, a pa-
tient little pack mule, trotted behind him,
shuffling his big bare feet and singing in a
plaintive monotone, in which Tom some-
times joined him.

The very daj^ before the wedding, the
Runt's employer, not master, stopped in his

204

THE MATRIX

transporting job long enough to knock up
a rude shelter of cedar posts for his em-
ployee, in which he threw the cedar boughs
and a skin blanket for a bed for the little
black crow. After he had finished it, and
was just ready to pull the door of the cabin
to, and go back for another load, Nancy
came along the path through the forest, and
her rich clear voice was singing Tom's fav-
orite hymn, the outpouring of the soul of
Charles Wesley, which he had made, as a
treasure for the ages, when he found him-
self in danger of death from the actual wa-
ters of a great storm.

"Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly ;
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high,"

Nancy sang and as she came into the clear-
ing Thomas Lincoln's rich voice rose and
joined hers, in the greatest plea ever writ-
ten:

205

THE MATRIX

"Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee;

Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of thy wing."

"^^Tiat kept you, Tom?" asked Xancy, as
Tom took the basket full of white linen from
her head and kissed her red hps in the proc-
ess.

"Building a little shack for that worthless
Runt," Tom answered, after another kiss.
"He 'd die if he had to sleep more 'n a hun-
dred feet away from me, drat him."

"Say, Tom, you freed Runt, why don't
vou ask him to make return and free vou?"
Xancy teased as she walked into the cabin,
fanning with a white, ruffed, pink-lined sun-
bonnet her cheeks, hot from the long and
burdened walk, and also love's imprint.

"Ain't it purty, honey bird?" Tom asked,
as Xancy stood looking around at the little
home with shining eyes.

206

THE MATRIX

"It is just a little under heaven, Tom,"
answered Nancy, crowding close between his
arm and his heart. "Nothing to do but put
these bleached curtains to the windows you
made so nice and big on account of my spin-
ning and to spread the bed."

"I think this cabin got sorter located jest
inside them pearl gates without our knowing
it, Nancy," Tom answered softly as he held
her close and looked over her head around
the cabin room.

And the home that Thomas Lincoln built
for Nancy Hanks in the township of Eliza-
bethtown in the year of our Lord, 1806,
would touch the heart of any woman even
to the fourth and fifth generation. Tom
had arranged with his brother Mordecai to
send his skins by a mule-packer, and before
the cabin's huge rough stone fireplace was
spread all that remained of the big bear Tom
had killed in Lincoln Settlement, whose fat
Nancy had expended on his head during her

207

THE MATRIX

ninth winter. It was a noble skin. Oth-
ers of deer and wild cat and coon lav about,
and over the foot of the rail bed was thrown
a blanket of the finest moleskins, which Tom
had made in long, lonely winter nights like
a woman makes a patchwork quilt.

"I always intended it to cover you, honey
bird, but I didn't think that I would—"
Nancy interrupted him by use of blush and
kiss.

"With the bright pots and dishes and my
wheel and loom, and my herbs and things
hanging from the rafters, and the twig
broom and the candle box full, and mv rock-
ing chair — " she was saying when Tom in-
terrupted her.

"With Aunt Nancy's big Bible and your
'Pilgrim's Progress' on the table, with two
dips for lighting, I tell j^ou, Nancy, it — it —
is jest a home, a thing I ain't never had be-
fore."

"You '11 never be lonely again," Nancy

208

THE MATRIX

promised, as she noted the sadness of a life's
longing that lay back of the day's joy.

"Never, with you," Tom assented.

"And here 's the marriage bond you and
Uncle Berry have got to sign, and leave in
the court house for a record, that thev ain't
no reason why we should n't marry," said
Nancy, as she took a paper from her pocket.

"They ain't no reason in this world why I
should n't marry you, Nancy, except mj^ un-
worthiness," Tom said thoughtfully.

"There 's no reason in this world or under
heaven why I should n't marry you, Tom,"
Nancy gave true and honest answer as she
looked him full in the face. "Because I 've
worked around amongst the men, folks have
backbit me, Tom, but I 'm honest."

"I know it, Nancy," answered Tom, with
the confidence shining in his face which a
good man always feels when he puts the
fate of himself and his posterity in the hands
of a woman. "Read me this here bond."

209

THE MATRIX

Thereupon Xancy Hanks, who could
read, read to Thomas Lincoln, who could not
read, the marriage bond which with their
licence of marriage is spread upon the rec-
ords for all men to see, even unto this day.

Know all men, by these presents, that we, Thomas
Lincoln and Richard Berry, are held and firmly bound
unto his Excellency, the Governor of Kentucky, in
the just and full sum of Fifty Pounds, current money,
to the payment of which well and truly, to be made to
the said ourselves, our heirs, etc., jointly and sever-
ally, firmly by these presents, sealed with our seals
and dated this 10th day of June, 1806. The condi-
tion of the above obligation is such that, whereas there
is marriage shortly intended between the above bound
Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, for which a li-
cense has been issued: now if there be no lawful cause
to obstruct the said marriage, then this obligation to
be void, or else to remain in full force and virtue of
law.

Thomas Lincoln (seal)
Richard Berry (seal)

Witness: John H. Parrott, Guardian.

"Shoo, all that fuss and fine words and
money put up just to sorter hold us to hav-

210

THE MATRIX

ing a right to marry, when the Lord gave us
to each other nigh fifteen years ago, you
five and me ten years," said Tom with a
chuckle. "How am I going to sign it any
way, when I can't write my name?"

"You can just make your mark, Tom, and
I '11 make mine on the licence, so as not to
shame you, because you '11 be reading and
writing before snow flies, with me to teach
you," answered Nancy, with ambition for
Tom blazing in her purple eyes.

"Maybe," answered Tom warily. "Did
you bring my white shirt?" He thus strove
to substitute one ambition for another in
Nancy's breast, and succeeded for the time
being, though before the predicted time
Nancy had taught him to scrawl T. Lincoln.

"I washed it and ironed it myself, Tom,"
answered Nancy eagerly. "And, oh, Tom,
you know how to fix yourself good ; will you
do it for the wedding tomorrow?"

"Nancy, I give you my word of honor

811

THE MATRIX

I '11 do all the things you did to me the time
I first wore that shirt and some more too.
If you don't trust me I '11 come along over
to Uncle Berry's, and let you polish me off.
I want to do you credit, honey bird, I do,
shure." Tom's face was very wistful as he
looked at lovely Nancy, standing in the
doorway.

"You and me will do each other credit,
Tom," Nancy answered, a flare of ambition
in her purple eyes and the gift of prophecy
descending upon her for the moment.

The twelfth day of June, eighteen hun-
dred and six, dawned in Elizabethtown in
the Commonwealth of Kentucky, clear and
warm, with fragrant breezes loitering over
the tree tops in the forest and shaking down
petals of the wild rose in the undergrowth
and of English roses on the threshold of the
homes in the busy little town. Soft white
clouds, that looked like the tips of the wings
of hiding attendant angels floating about in

212

THE MATRIX

the blue waiting to descend as guests at the
wedding of Nancy Hanks and Thomas
Lincoln, rose on the horizon.

Members of the Berry and Sparrow house-
holds swarmed in and about and around,
getting all in readiness for the big "wedding
infair" to be held out in the edge of the clear-
ing at Old Rock Spring, to which well nigh
the entire country-side had been invited.
Long before the dawn of the wedding day,
Uncle Berry was up and seeing that the car-
cases of a young beef, a lamb, two shoats,
and numerous wild fowl were roasting over
the barbecue pits which he had had dug the
day before, and in which Runt and Ned
Berry had been burning hickory logs down
into beds of coals all night. He mixed, him-
self, the huge black pot of herbs and butter
and vinegar with which the baking meat
was basted, and sniffed often and carefully
during the day, to be sure that the roasting
was being done slowly but surely, which

213

THE MATRIX

would result in a crackling brown crust with
not an inch of burnt skin to mar the perfect
taste.

Aunt Lucy and Aunt Lizzie and their
women friends worked around corn pone and
pound cake to cup custards, and cold slaw
and back again, until the huge flat rock, on
which was spread the thickest Berry home-
spun damask, was in danger of tilting with
its burden of food. The gentle young ma-
tron, Sarah jNIitchell Thompson, who had
come twentj^ miles with a new-born baby to
the wedding of her best beloved cousin, and
pert little Nancy Sparrow Friend worked in
Nancy Hanks' little dormer loft bedroom,
smoothing out the fine white homespun wed-
ding dress and packing a few of her things
in a bundle, to be carried to the cabin out
in the clearing at the last minute. And
among them Nancj^ walked, drinking in their
kindness and affection, as a flower drinks in
the sun and the dew, but she walked alone.

214

THE MATRIX

Thomas Lincoln had taken to his beloved
woods in an agony of embarrassment and
awe. Tom was not accustomed to be the
center of interest.

"I bet Tom have gone clean back to Lin-
coln Settlement, and if you say so, Nancy,
I '11 get on a mule and drag him back for
you," Uncle Tom Sparrow teased, as he
lifted a keg of elderberry wine, of Nancy's
own brew, out of the cool cellar and carried
it over to set in the cooler drip of Old Rock
Spring.

"Nobody has to rope in a bridegroom for
Miss Nancy," Giles Claibourne said, as he
looked wistfully at Nancy and then at pretty
Hannah Lytsey with whom Nancy, with
practical cunning, had set him to selecting
smooth rose-colored chips of cedar to be used
as plates for the feast, from a pile Tom had
cut the day before at the woodshed.

"Tom will be here," Nancy answered, with
a soft laugh in her throat and in her eyes.

215

THE MATRIX

She knew so well what Tom was undergo-
ing, but she dared not go to him and leave
the guests.

The family and the near of kin and friends
who had been helping prepare the "infair,"
were just about done with their task, and
the sun had sunk almost to the treetops, from
which height he grants to the earth the
witching hour, when Elder Head arrived and
gave the signal for the wedding array. The
men washed up at the pump in the back
yard and assumed their decorous Sunday
coats, of either broadcloth or homespun,
while the women took off the aprons that
had shielded their festive dimitv, shook out
their ruffles, smoothed water-waved and
banded hair, and began to ask if the bride
needed assistance in her toilet.

It was the custom in the pioneer life to
have the actual wedding ceremony per-
formed with only the family and next of kin
and friends as witnesses, just before the

216

THE MATRIX

waves of the infair were scheduled to break
over the then ah-eady married pair. There
were not more than two dozen well-beloved
"folks" in the long, low-roofed Berry living-
room to witness the marriage ceremony of
Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln, and
their eyes were dim as Nancy came into the
room in her soft white gown, with a rose in
her red-gold hair, seeming somehow to their
tenderness as the woman incarnate. She
walked over to the fireplace, before which
sat Elder Head back of a table, on which lay
the large Bible sweet, dead Nancy Shipley
had brought with her as she followed big
Joseph Hanks into the Wilderness, and her-
self lighted from the flint box two tall can-
dles of her own dipping, and with her own
steady hand opened the Book at the verses
she wanted read to begin her marriage cere-
mony :

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a
seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as

217

THE MATRIX

death — many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it — "

Then she turned, and with the love light
of the ages on her face, held out her hand
to Tom, who had been standing in the door-
way watching her. He came straight to
her with his fine head held high, and the
freedom of a woods animal in his lithe stride.
Then, with his solemn eyes sunk deep in
hers, he stood before Elder Head and made
his marriage vow:

"I, Thomas, take thee Nancy, to have and
to hold, until death us do part."

And Nancy answered him with her eyes
and with her lips :

"I, Nancy, take thee Thomas, to keep to,
only as long as we both do live."

Both vows were kept and the result was
justified.

The "infair," which followed immediately,
at which the whole countryside was present,
was such a notable occasion that Daniel

218

THE MATRIX

Bishop, then twenty, when nearing a hun-
dred years of age, compared most unfavor-
ably all the like functions he had attended in
the eighty years that passed from that date,
with "the infair at Nancy and Tom Lin-
coln's wedding."

After the feast had been consumed, the
songs all sung, the toasts drunk in the elder-
berry wine, the dancing all over, and the fat
pine torches flared down into ashes, Nancy
tore herself from loving embraces and went
out into the forest with her husband, along
the path he had worn from her old home to
her new\ In his hand he carried her nup-
tial bundle, and under her arm was sweet,
dead Nancy's Book of Books. Far before
them flitted the shadow of faithful Runt.

When they had reached the door of their
humble home, and Tom had drawn Nancy
across the threshold and into his arms, a
star rose in the East and shone down over
the sacred veil of hovering, purple darkness.

219

CHAPTER XI

THE first two and a half years of the
married life of Tom and Nancy Lin-
coln passed by in happy, busy, contented
pioneer life that kept through the passing
seasons the decided flavor of the honeymoon.
Thomas Lincoln had been too long without
the tenderness of a woman's lave to be easily
satisfied, and he would hurry home from his
carpentering through the woods to the little
cabin in the clearing, with all the eagerness
of a lover, even run the last few paces to
clasp Nancy in rough arms, as she stood
dimpling at the door or the edge of the wood
waiting for him.

"What you got for supper, honey bird?"
he would ask after his heart hunger had
been satisfied.

220

THE MATRIX

"Roast squirrel, corn pone and poke
greens," she would be likely to answer, and
very soon thereafter prove her statement by
setting the steaming food before the hungry
man, who never failed to go to the cedar
bucket and earthern pan at the back door
to wash his hands and face, after Nancy had
reminded him to do so a few times when they
were first married. "What have you been
doing today?" she would ask, as she sat op-
posite to him doing her full trencher duty.

"I was putting the roof to the new rooms
Eph Beckett is building to the Elizabeth-
town Tavern. And say, Nancy, me and
him had one good ruckus over this here
law that if a slave gits away, his master kin
go git him. Eph, he held that a nigger is
property like a hawg or a horse that he paid
money for, and he had a right to go git him.
I held that a man had no right to own an-
other man, even if black, in the first place,
much less hound him down. We had it up

221

THE MATRIX

and down and Eph he got hot under his col-
lar. I did n't have no collar on, but I shut
him up, after a considerable crowd had gath-
ered, by asking him if it is right to hold
slaves, whv did Mister President Jefferson
make a law that no more be brought from
Africa after next year. Old Eph would
die by that Tom Jefferson, and so he shet
up."

"Mr. Beckett is old, Tom, and I would n't
argufy with him tomorrow," Xancy advised,
as she helped Tom to the squirrel rump and
some more of the pone.

"I won't have the chanct to fer he told me
he could git along without me," Tom an-
swered with a baffled look coming into his
eyes. "A man oughter have the right to his
say and his work separate. I hold against
slavery strong, and Eph holds for it, but
that don't hurt the way I shingle his roof.
I won't have no man put a muzzle on me
just because he pays me money."

«22

THE MATRIX

"No, don't you never let any man make
a slave of your speech, Tom," Nancy agreed
with a flame rismg in her eyes.

"But if it keeps up against my work we
might git hungry poor," Tom said slowly,
with anxiety drawing lines on his rugged
face.

"Well, just declare for freedom when
asked and trust the rest to the Lord, who
made us all free," Nancy advised with high
headed courage, as she began the simple op-
eration of clearing the table and putting a
bountiful dinner for the f reedman Runt, who
was sitting on his heels at the front of his
snug shelter waiting for it.

"Oh, I reckon Eph will come around when
he wants a good story tolt him," Tom said, as
Nancy filled his pipe, lit it by expertly pick-
ing up a coal from the embers of the sup-
per fire, drew it once herself and handed it
to him with a kiss and a stroke of the rough
black hair. "Hurry up, honey bird, and

223

THE MATRIX

come read me a new story outen the good
Book to coax him with."

Thomas Lincohi had always been a good
story teller in his dry quiet way, to the hun-
ters and men around Lincoln Creek, but,
since his residence in Elizabethtown, the gift
had been greatly develojied. ^lany of the
backwoodsmen he worked with could not
read and nothing delighted Tom or them
more than to have a story conference at noon
time or on a Saturday nis^ht, when thev
brought their wives and daughters in to
trade with the merchants around the Square,
while they waited to "tote" home the pur-
chases. Tom's slow mind was very reten-
tive and the ".^sop's Fables" and "Pil-
grim's Progress" were veritable gold mines
to him and through him to the other work-
ing men, as well as all of the stories of the
Bible, ^^o matter how tired he was, after
one of Nancy's good suppers, he would al-
ways light two candles, lay the books on the

224

THE MATRIX

corner of the table, pull Nancy's rocking
chair up, sprawl himself on a bench close to
her so his arm could find her at a second's
notice and give himself up to the enchant-
ments her rich voice could extract from the
written page of the old books. The wit of
the Fables and the Progress of Faithful
always came first, and then Nancy would
pause a moment, while Tom drew closer and
put his rough head on her soft shoulder, as
she opened the Book with reverent fingers
and began to read and re-read the stories
that dead Nancy Hanks had read to the two
children from the Book she had brought on
a mule-pack from Virginia in place of food
for herself, knowing that she must thus
bring the bread of life with her into the Wil-
derness.

"I will bring you out from under the
burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you
of their bondage," was the crux of the story
he still loved best and he would invariably

225

THE MATRIX

raise his head with the fire of the zealot com-
ing into his eyes and ask:

"The Lord meant folks to be free, Nancy,
didn't He?"

"Yes, Tom, He did, and some day they all
will be free!"

"Let 's put it in our prayers, Nancy,"
Tom would answer, when he knelt beside
Nancy with his head bowed against hers as
they said prayers every night before blow-
ing out the candle.

From the simple faith and communion of
these two pioneers came the force that freed
hundreds and thousands of black human be-
ings with hearts and souls.

Yes, the days and weeks and months flew
by for Nancy Hanks Lincoln as she worked
and sang in her cabin on the edge of the
forest. The "one heifer yearling called
Piedy," which her father had given to Nancy
in his will, had two descendants in the shack
outside the cabin and many pounds of gUt-

226

THE MATRIX

edged butter did Nancy take or send intc
Elizabethtown by Thomas, along with beau-
tiful fancy woven lengths of cloth, that were
eagerly sought by the gentlemen of the town
for vests, to be exchanged for gilt-edged coin.
She also exchanged packages of herbs,
strings of pepper and piggins of maple
sugar, that she boiled whenever the sap ran,
for banknotes and added them to the score
she and Tom were using to make payments
on a tract of land over on the Big South
Fork of Noland Creek.

For some time after her wedding Nancy
would mount Baldy. the steady nag given to
her and Tom by Brother Jo Hanks, a de-
scendant also from the Baldv of their father's
will, behind Tom and take her "truck" in
for trading herself, which she conducted with
her old skill and joy among her former cus-
tomers. Then for awhile she had to give
that up for the business of producing small
Nancy, who came in tlie spring following

«27

THE MATRIX

her marriage. A baby is an effectual hob-
ble for any woman, and after her arrival
Nancy could be found at all times in her
home, singing -and working, nursing the baby
and making happiness for Tom when he
came home.

But if Nancy could not go to the world,
some of her world came to her. On the long
summer evenings Uncle Berry would ride
out, sometimes with Aunt Berry on the pil-
lion behind him, Jo Hanks would come
swinging on his long legs through the forest,
Mordecai would ride up and hitch to a tree
on the edge of the clearing, and with him
would come Nancy Sparrow and Charlie,
or very often Giles Claibourne, who brought
behind him blushing Hannah Lystie, whom
Nancy had urged upon him for the cherish-
ing of Gilly and his small brothers and sis-
ters.

The whole party would sit out under the
trees and great were the political discus-

228

THE MATRIX

sions waged. At that date the separate
States were still ratifying the Constitution,
Hamilton's banking policies were always un-
der fire, and the Louisiana Purchase was a
bitterly contested question. On one mem-
orable evening Christopher Graham met
Felix Grundy in front of the home of Nancy
Hanks and Thomas Lincoln and "the fur
flew." At all times the absorbing topic in
the Southwest was the question of slavery,
and these two slave holders met and did bat-
tle with Thomas Lincoln on his own ground.
Elder Head was present at that famous dis-
cussion and he firmly "held with Tom and
Nancy."

And if Thomas Lincoln spoke out in no
uncertain terms, Nancy had her say on the
subject, and her way was to the point and —
prophetic.

"The Lord will take 'em away from you
men who buy 'em. They are His people."

"The Lord made the man who invented

229

THE MATRIX

the cotton gin and by so doing intended slav-
ery, Mrs. Lincoln," Felix Grundy answered,
with the argument which kept America in
political storms and retarded her growth for
half a century.

"Wait and see," laughed Nancy in per-
fect faith.

The winter of 1807-8 was a hard one, but
Nancy and the small Nancy kept snug and
busy in the cabin, for it was easy enough for
Tom to keep the huge chimney piled high
with roaring logs, and the larder stocked
with venison, bear, turkey and pork.
Nancy still sang at her spinning and weav-
ing, but a shadow of trouble lay at the depth
of her violet eves and she now took her own
products to market herself, no matter how
intense the cold or how bad the traveling.
The merchants simply would not buy from
Thomas Lincoln, and the fact was a most in-
tense humiliation to Nancy.

"Why would n't you buy that bolt of but-

230

THE MATRIX

ternut from Tom when he offered it to you
last week, Giles?" she asked Mr. Claibom-ne,
with a simple directness as he counted out a
good price for the cloth into her hand.

"A week's aging don't make cloth of a
finer weave," she added.

"I was so confused after he got through
a lot of abolition talk at me right in front of
two of my niggers, that I thought I did n't
need it," answered Giles with kind indirect-
ness in stating his case.

"Well, the cloth is abolition wove and you
know you can't buy its equal in the coun-
try," Nancy answered with her head high.
"You trade in souls and Tom and me only
ask a fair trade in cloth."

"I '11 buy anything you bring me to sell,
Nancy," Mr. Claibourne answered her.

"You '11 trade with Tom Lincoln or show
an empty shelf when the traders ask you
for peach-blow cotton or plaid wove vest
lengths," she answered as she swept out of

281

THE MATRIX

the store with scarlet spots high up under
her purple eyes.

Nancy's experience with her friend Mr.
Giles Claibourne was repeated from time to
time at the other stores, until the fact was
driven home into her heart that Thomas Lin-
coln was under a ban that threatened to
throttle both her and his industries. When
he went into town the farmers and traders
and carpenters and mechanics stood around
him and applauded his abolition views, ex-
pressed in pointed, strong words with argu-
ment of the Book to support his contentions,
for they had no slaves and it was easy to be-
lieve as he did. However, they did not ex-
press their views with enough frankness to
injure their barter and trade with the rich
men of the community, who did own slaves
and resented being taken to task for it.

But if Tom was fiery and inspired when
talking in the village, on the street corners,
and around store stoves, he was depressed

232

THE MATRIX

and bewildered and humiliated at home in
the little cabin.

"Looks like standing up for the Lord's
right is going to lead us into being mighty
poor, Nancy honey," he said one night as he
sat before the roaring fire with his elbows
resting on the table and his head in his
hands. "In the pride of their vain hearts
they won't buy from me and you won't sell
to them. What are we going to do ?"

"The good Lord gave us this land and the
woods beyond to make a living on and we '11
just do without anybody, and let 'em do
without us. Adam and Eve prospered con-
siderable until they got neighborly with the
Devil," Nancy answered with a comfortable
laugh. The dual passion of her life flared
up in her eyes as she drew his head to her
breast. "I don't ask nothing of God but
you, and your heart clean for freedom, Tom
Lincoln."

"Me neither, Nancy," he responded as he

233

THE MATRIX

engulfed her in her strong arms to which
men were denying labor.

But to live apart from and without the
world is well nigh an impossibility for pion-
eers, and also for men with a purpose in
their hearts. Thomas Lincoln could not
stay in the Wilderness with what he con-
ceived to be a message in his soul, and he
was drawn irresistibly to the town to
"preach," and his talking gi'cw more and
more effective as it divided Elizabethtown
into pro- and anti-slavery groups. During
the spring he found that practically all
work had been denied him and he was forced
to provide for his family from the Wilder-
ness. And as the daj^s grew warm and the
earth loamy, he plowed with Baldy, and
hunted and fished and his little family lived
well, with only the sense of injustice keep-
ing them from being content.

And all the while Runt, the shadow, was
also going his own way. He helped Tom

fS4

THE MATRIX

whenever there was need of him, but long
days and hours he spent in the woods trap-
ping and skinning and curing pelts of all
kinds. He kept his operations out of
Nancy's sight, for he remembered the scene
on Lincoln Creek about the poults in their
childhood, and she really was not aware that
he had built up a very lucrative trade in
Elizabethtown with his beautiful skins.

And the whole of Elizabethtown beheved,
or pretended to believe, that Thomas Lin-
coln, the abolitionist, was using the little
black man as a kind of fence to dispose of
his own productions to avoid their boycott,
while he preached as he chose against them.

It was a cruel, bitter cruel, situation.

And Nancy had to face it on that early
July day, perhaps the 4th, three years after
the summer in which she had chosen be-
tween Thomas Lincoln and Clinton INIeri-
weather before the eyes of all Elizabethtown.
The last payments for the land out at

235

THE MATRIX

Noland Creek were due, and she felt that
she must go into Elizabethtown to pay them
at the Elizabethtown Bank, for she could see
how Thomas shrank from business with his
coldly courteous enemies. She dressed her-
self in one of her old blue homespuns, which
was faded to the color of the heavens, put
on her white sunbonnet, mounted Baldy and
rode away from the cabin, leaving Tom and
wee Nancy in charge. It was summer and
she was young and strong and love-mated,
and she sang as she rode along under heavy
leafed boughs and over daisy-dotted carpets
of green. The joy of life was in her strong
body, as lissom as it had ever been, only
made richer in curves by her easy mater-
nity, when she slipped from old Baldy,
hitched him to a rack and entered the Eliza-
bethtown Bank, expecting to find kind Mr.
Robinson to transact her business for her.

Instead of her friend, Clinton Meri-
weather rose to greet her. Three years out

S36

THE MATRIX

in the world beyond the Alleghanies had not
taken her out of his heart and he had come
back with a bitter determination to make
another effort to get her. Her developed
beauty almost made him reel, as she held out
her hand to him with a glad, hearty, neigh-
borly smile of welcome.

"Howdy, Clint, welcome back to Eliza-
bethtown," she said, trying to put as much
neighborliness into her voice as possible.

"Thank you, Nancy," he said as he took
her hand in both his and held it for a sec-
ond between his hot palms before he let it
fall. In both their minds was the memory
of the similar greeting they had spoken at
the moment of his undoing years before.
And at the memory of it Nancy blushed, as a
woman will, and the blush quickened Clin-
ton's pulse.

"What can I do for you?" he asked,
grasping at the straw of business to steady
himself.

237

THE MATRIX

"I want to make a payment on Tom's and
my land at Noland Creek. The notes are
here in the bank," Nancy answered in a re-
lieved voice and with a certain note of pride
at thus proving Tom, the husband, a land-
owner to the discarded but powerful lover.
"We could have made all the last payment
if the winter had n't been so hard."

"Still the business in skins has been brisk,"
Clinton ventured cautiously, looking at her
with veiled eyes. He had been told of the
deahngs of Thomas Lincoln through his
negro and wanted to see if she were a party
thereto or deceived by her husband; the lat-
ter he judged to be the case by Nancy's quick
answer :

"Tom never traps, and shot skins don't
sell for much. I wish we could finish pay-
ing for the land this summer, for interest
mounts up."

"Maybe we can arrange some way to
make it easier on you. I '11 come out be-

238

THE MATRIX

fore long and talk to Mr. Lincoln about it,"
the banker said with all his most gracious
tone and manner. "We 're just going on
being friends, aren't we, Nancy ^"

Clinton ]\Ieri weather knew with bitter-
ness that he was reduced to the old formula
of friendship for a desired woman's husband,
and he meant to use it for all it contained,
for he had convinced himself that Nancy's
situation as the wife of the Pariah must be
changed.

"We '11 be mighty glad to have you come,
Clint — if you want to — after you hear — we
ain't got many friends now, me and Tom,"
Nancy answered, with quick tears rising to
her dark lashes, thus putting herself outside
the pale with her husband, though she well
knew that the community would not so place
her.

"I know all about it, Nancy, and nothing
could keep me from — being your friend,"
Clinton answered her with the tenderness of

239

THE MATRIX

his voice so controlled that it only meant
strength to Nancy's humiliation. "I 'm
coming out Saturday and shoot poults with
Lincoln if you '11 fry some for supper. I
have n't had any fried turkey for three years,
remember, and put on the big pot and the
little kettle."

"Oh, Chnt, I '11 be so glad to have you
come as a friend to us. Mavbe vou can
help folks to — to understand Tom." And
in the happiness of having found sjinpathy,
Nancy's tears overflowed as they would
never have done in the presence of enmity.
She was drying them on the ruffle of her
sunbonnet while Clinton was administering
a friendly and controlled pat to her shoul-
der, still heaving with swallowed sobs, when
Dame Evelyn Robinson and Jean, now
Kyle, entered.

Poor Nancy! The long winter of soli-
tude would count as nothing in their eyes

240

THE MATRIX

against the one brief moment of friendly and
sympathetic communion.

"She is shameless," Dame Robinson said
under her breath to her daughter. But
Nancy was too innocent and happy and
friendly to notice the coldness of their greet-
ing, which, to tell the truth, would have been
colder if thev had not felt a direct and
watchful gaze leveled on them from the keen
eyes of their good friend, the banker, whom
they had come in to welcome.

And as she rode through the purple sum-
mer twilight, Nancy's heart seemed to throw
off its burden and she sang as she had never
sung before, as she let Baldy amble along
at his will.

"Jesus, lover of my soul — "

her voice chanted out above the tree tops
over into the home clearing and reached
Thomas Lincoln, as he sat on the cabin steps

241

THE MATRIX

waiting for her, and immediately he stood
up and answered :

"Let me to thy bosom fly;
While the nearer waters roll,
And the tempest still is high."

Then he went to meet her and they finished
together :

'o^

"Other refuge ha%'e I none,

• •*•••

All my help from thee I bring:
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of thy wing."

And as in the twiHght Xancy went into
the strong tender arms of her husband, her
heart, which had been comforted by the
thoughts of the friendship offered them in
their defenselessness rose in her bosom with
hope and gratitude.

And at that moment she clung to her hus-
band as she looked at the evening star rising
in the east.

242

THE MATRIX

"It 's true, Tom! I pray it 's going to be
a man," she whispered.

Her prayer was answered. The child
was a man among men and was called Abra-
ham Lincoln.

S4S

CHAPTER XII

THE summer before her son's birth was
a busy, hard one for Nancy, though
true to his word. Banker Meriweather
fended the "tempest" from her. The peo-
ple of EHzabethtown really loved Nancy
Lincoln and it was easy for a few words here
and there from the banker to restrain them
from making any demonstration of active
dislike for Thomas, her husband, especially
as her condition kept him near her and out
of actively angry arguments most of the
time. But all over the country the slavery
question was burning with a greater heat,
and the Runt, in his anomalous position
creeping in and out, selling skins that they
thought his master sent him to trade, was

244.

THE MATRIX

breath on the smouldering suspicion and dis-
like they had for Thomas Lincoln. They
bided their time, but they got him at last.

And her husband's frequent spells of de-
pression only made Nancy more courageous
as she worked through the late summer and
fall preparing for the long winter, which
was going to be doubly hard for her. Since
Tom could not get work they had no money
to buy wool or cotton for her spinning, and
she had only the fleece to weave one tiny little
garment to keep her future President warm,
but she contrived a few fine cotton slips from
her own things to put under his fleece. Also
she depended upon wrapping him in the
moleskin against the bitterest cold.

'T 'm mighty glad you can be a little
happy, honey bird," Thomas said with one
of his rare sad smiles, as he stood hanging
her bunches of sage and sassafras and tansy
and cammomile with strings of red peppers,
to the huge hewn rafters that ran across the

840

THE MATRIX

cabin and supported the floor of the loft,
which was reached by a ladder.

And Nancy answered him with the Ma-
donna's words from the Book:

"My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God^ my Saviour."

"That 's the way I feel, Thomas, and I know
I am carrying a blessed burden for you and
me."

"There never was a woman like you in
the world before, Nancy," Thomas said, as
he looked down from his ladder on her with
great reverence.

After the slowly dying blaze of autumn
and the purple flicker of Indian summer
had burned out, winter flung its blankets
of snow over the little cabin, and sleet rained
down upon it and the winds tore at it, but
failed to shake it. Tom and the Runt kept
the huge logs piled high and blazing, and by

246

THE MATRIX

their light Nancj^ read and dreamed, as she
did the few tasks concerned with the cook-
ing of the food for her family. When the
weather was good, Tom went into town for
the necessities, which were few, for they had
provisioned themselves well against the win-
ter need, and what they lacked in dried meat
his gmi supphed. Almost his only pur-
chases were powder for his horn and coffee
and tea for Nancy's pot. When the
weather would allow it, Nancy Friend and
Aunt Lucy Berry came out to see Nancy,
but their visits were few and far between, on
account of the cold.

Then just before the dawn of Sunday,
February 12th, 1809, Nancy's hour came
upon her and her son, Abraham Lincoln,
opened his big gray eyes to the first clear
sunrise in two weeks.

"Shoo, Nancy, I never did see such a child,
he 's as big as a yearling now," Thomas, the
father, said after he had performed the sim-

247

THE MATRIX

pie birth rights for his son under Nancy's
directions, for neither of them had thought of
calling for assistance through the dark cold
forest.

"He 's a-looking right into my heart,
Tom," Nancy said, as she watched a pair of
big gray eyes open over the rim of her white
breast, and seem to look up straight into hers
for a second before they flickered and shut.

"He '11 never look into a purtier sight,"
Tom answered, as he kissed Nancy gently
and drew the moleskin around mother and
son, both of whom were immediately asleep
after the trying ordeal of introduction to
each other.

With the advent of young Abraham Lin-
coln into the world the grim weather broke,
and by the time he was a month old, spring
had come with her myriads of life buddings.
Nancy was again on her feet — more full of
life and strength than she had ever been,
and also bursting with pride over the man-

248

THE MATRIX

child, who was such a wonder of size rliat
many of her friends journeyed out just to
behold him.

"Lordy, Nancy, this child will be Gov-
ernor or git hung," the old stage driver
Hardstay declared, as he stopped his stage
and walked a half mile across to pay his re-
spects. "The set of that jaw is to rule or
ruin." Years after Abraham Lincoln lay
in his grave, old Hardstay, nearing the cen-
tury mark, would take pride in repeating his
prophecy.

And as the building season opened,
Thomas Lincoln drove himself into Eliza-
bethtown in fruitless quests for work.
Builders never had a job for him, and while
the men would sit at dinner time and talk
with him and listen to him, even question
him on his favorite political theme, he failed
to find an invitation to "lend a hand." And
this fact ate into his very vitals and made
him come home in a state of utter despond-

249

THE MATRIX

ency and bitterness, a state which Nancy
never failed to hghten for him with a stead-
fast reiteration of the principles of inherent
freedom for mankind, which were making
him an outcast.

"It 's not wrong to preach the Lord's
right, Tom," she always affirmed.

It was Nancy's own faith and courage and
love which supported her during it all, but
she scarcely realized how much she depended
upon the friendship and sympathy of Clin-
ton Meriweather as he went back and forth
along the bridle path to Elizabethtown, al-
ways shooting with Tom and bringing in the
game for her to cook and eat with them.

He never talked politics with Tom but
they swapped "^ sop's Fables" for worldly
tales of the great cities of New York and
Boston and Philadelphia, which Clinton
knew so well. Tom never tired of hearing
stories of the sea and the city which Clinton
had collected, and Nancy was just as eager

250

THE MATRIX

for them as Tom. She would sit with wee
Nancy at her knee and Abraham on her
breast, and Hsten with her big purple eyes
eagerly flaring into his, until Meriweather
would be obliged to go home through the
forest with a flame that was dangerous, burn-
ing in his breast. He was ready for any-
thing to get her and he thought he saw hope
in what he considered Tom's evident unbal-
ance of life and character.

"She 's in a dream about the poor fool
and something must wake her," he muttered
to himself one night as he went through the
woods, after looking back to see Nancy with
Tom behind her holding a candle high over
her head to light him to the opening of the
path. "I must save her. I must."

And in truth the strain upon Nancy was
becoming very bitter. Her people came
less frequently to see her, because one by
one they had acquired the necessary slaves
to carry on their business, and they did n't

251

THE MATRIX

care to hear Tom's opinion of the matter.
She had both the children to care for and
Tom was now most of the time away in
Elizabethtown, talking around the Square
and the stores and making trouble for him-
self with each discussion, which trouble he
brought home for Nancy at night.

Naturally, when Clinton INIeriweather
came whistling through the woods, it seemed
to Nancy that she could slip by means of his
stories and jokes into another world for a
moment's ease from her heavy burdens.

"Tell me about ships, Clint, it rests me,"
she said to him one day, when he caught her
at the ironing board, weary and hot.

And the banker believed that the time he
bided had almost come.

Then the blow from which Thomas Lin-
coln never recovered his spirit fell upon
him, and Nancy was there to see it admin-
istered.

It was upon the occasion of her first visit

252

THE MATRIX

to Elizabethtowii after the birth of her son,
who was about six weeks old, and she had
dressed herself and him with the greatest
care in the best they possessed, which was
some of her own patched girlhood finery for
them both. All the afternoon she w^nt from
one store to another doing her little trading
directly, with no apologies offered. Also
she offered no goods for sale, but she did ex-
hibit the baby with the greatest pride to her
old friends, who were secretly suffering at
what they thought was her unhappy condi-
tion.

After she had collected her pathetically
small bundles of tea and coffee, she crossed
the Square to the front of the Court House,
where a huge stump of white poplar had
been left in the original clearing, to be used
for the political speaking. Her horse was
hitched near and she wanted to deposit her
packages and look in the crowd she saw
around the stump, for Tom, meaning to

253

THE MATRIX

gently draw him away from arguments that
would hurt him. Just as she reached the
outskirts of the crowd, Felix Grundy, the
Tennessean, and old friend of the Berrys
and Hankses and Lincolns, stepped on the
stump and began to address the crowd.
The year before, the act which prohibited the
bringing of slaves into America had been
put in operation, and feeling ran high in
the Southern states among the Southern
planters, who felt they must have the blacks
to work their cotton and tobacco, trading in
which the Xortherners were making large
fortunes. A large party of young Southern
orators had risen to oppose the Jeffersonians
and urge the repealing of the exclusion
act under the threat of secession. Of these
speakers, Grundj' of Tennessee was well
nigh as fiery as Clay of Kentucky, and
wherever he orated feeling ran high.

As Nancy Hanks Lincoln, with six-
weeks-old Abraham curled against her

254

THE MATRIX

breast, stood on the outskirts of the crowd,
which was composed of most of the leading
gentry of Ehzabethtown, who always en-
thusiastically rallied around the handsome,
rich and cultured Grundy, and a large
sprinkling of the tradesmen and mechanics
and farmers and workmen, she failed to see
Tom standing just to one side of the speaker,
leaning against a poplar tree, whitthng a
stick, but with fire in his eyes. The first
she knew of his presence was when his big
voice cut into one of Grundy's most impres-
sive flights on the inviolable rights of prop-
erty.

"Right here, Mister Grundy, please,"
Tom's voice commanded with such authority
that even the silver-tongued Grundy paused
and looked at his interrupter with attention.
"Granted that nobody has a right to take
niggers away from them that owns them like
horses, was it right for 'em to be owned in
the first place? Did the Lord ever in-

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THE MATRIX

tend — " But that was as far as the aboH-
tionist was allowed to get. The "tempest"
of dislike was loosed on him and swept over
the head of Nancy and Abraham as it en-
gulfed him.

Gideon Robinson rose on a small stump
near at hand and his sharp voice whipped
his words through the air:

"That will do, Lincoln. No man who
preaches abolition until we refuse to trade
with him, and then sends his slave sneaking
in to trade for him has a voice in this dis-
cussion. We want nothing more from you."

Tom's head went up like that of a war
horse, but Nancy shrank as if from a blow, as
she clutched Abraham closer to her breast.

"Tain't so," she cried, answering the dual
charge with a woman's wail of agony.

"If you mean that nigger Runt, I freed
him before I was fifteen years old," Tom
said with his dark eyes fixed on Robin-
son's face. "I pay him for what he does

256

THE MATRIX

for me and if he trades, he trades for him-
self, free just the same as you or me. If
anybody don't know it, I hereby declare him
a free man."

Tom's defiance was the first act of aboli-
tion in Elizabethtown and it brought its
storm. The crowd was an angry mob, from
which Nancy found herself drawn with au-
thoritative hands, lifted up on her horse and
led out of the Square. Her head was bent
over that of her swaddled son and she was
weeping so bitterly that she did not realiz.e
who was leading her horse, until she was well
into the clearing. Then she looked up to see
Clinton Meriweather's pained eyes, full of
sympathy, upon her. He was riding his
roan, which always stood hitched in front of
the bank, and he took the bridle path in front
of her, leading her horse after him.

"I '11 get you home, Nancy," was all he
said, and silently he led her through the
woods to her cabin, silently he lifted her, with

257

THE MATRIX

her son in her arms, to the ground, and as
silently followed her into the sunset dusk of
the cabin.

"Now I suppose you '11 come with me
away from the half-wit who can't take care
of you. I '11 take you and the children to
your aunt's, until we can get rid of him and
I can marry you," he said, as he stood in
front of the logs smouldering in the fire-
place. "You 've suffered enough poverty
and disgrace with him. Now you shall have
what you deserve." As he spoke the will of
the handsome, strong man of the world went
forth to do battle with that of the homespun,
pioneer woman whom he had promised him-
self he would somehow take and hold.

"It 's the God's truth, Nancy, and you
had better go back to your folks," came an
interruption before Nancy could make her
answer, and Tom Lincoln stood in the door.

"I got away but they are a-going to come

258

THE MATRIX

to shiveree me in less than an hour, and I
want to go out into the woods and lose myself
from people who hunt humans like critters."
As he spoke the fire of what the world then
called fanaticism, a fanaticism which later
involved the whole world, flamed in his eyes
and his black hair stood up like the crest of
a charger in a holy war. "Freedom is all
that 's worth living for!"

Standing with Abraham on her breast,
Nancy Hanks Lincoln made her choice be-
tween the two men, one offering all that the
world could give her and the other — nothing,
seemingly.

"I 'm sorry, Clint, but I hold with Tom,
and good-by," she said with a smile that
shone round and across her son's head.

Then she turned from him to her husband
and said : "Pack little Nancy and as much
as you can on the horse, and drive the stock
along after me, Tom. I 'm going to take

259

THE MATRIX

myself and you and our children back into
the woods on Noland Creek. The Lord
will guide us to freedom."

And out into the Wilderness she went with
Abraham. Tom followed.

THE END

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XX